Gender Pay Gap
The Gender Pay Gap compares the hourly rates of pay levels for male and female employees taken as an average across a whole organisation and all its job roles. Since 2017, it has been a requirement for all organisations with more than 250 employees to publish an annual Gender Pay Gap Report, with our 2022 report marking our sixth publication.
At Housing 21, our Gender Pay Gap is high and is driven mainly by the structure of our workforce as opposed to a lack of female representation at the top of the organisation. Service delivery roles, which are lower paid than other areas of the organisation, make up by far the largest proportion of our workforce and the majority of these roles (95%) are occupied by women.
This gap isn’t unique to Housing 21 and is reflective of the profile of the care and support sectors that Housing 21 operates in, where women are heavily represented.
We are by no means complacent or content to have a gender pay gap and we will use our influence to develop female employees, help create career pathways for women in roles that have traditionally been attributed to men (such as in IT, construction or property development) and attract more men into care. Indeed, we are proud at the high levels of female representation in these roles, subverting the national standard.
To address the gap, in 2023 we will commit to:
- Hiring a Recruitment Manager to help embed inclusive actions into our organisational recruitment policy and practice
- Implementing a new recruitment system that helps to remove bias from our processes
- Continuing to develop diverse cohorts through our Extra Care Academy scheme
- Working to attract more male workers into care and ancillary roles
- Operating gender diverse interview panels for the recruitment to roles paid £50,000 and above
- Maintaining our commitment that Care Workers will be paid a minimum of 10 percent above the National Living Wage
- Promoting flexible working practices, including a nine−day working fortnight for relevant roles
- Using a transparent pay policy and grading system and continuing to use a job evaluation methodology to help ensure that bias does not impact on pay decisions
We will continually take steps to understand the factors which contribute to our gender pay gap and are committed to taking action to address this, to set targets for improvement and to monitor our progress over time.
