ECL s Gender Pay Gap Report

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ECL’s Gender Pay Gap Report

The mean (average) gender pay gap figure uses hourly pay of all full-pay employees to calculate the difference between the mean (average) hourly pay of men, and the mean (average) hourly pay of women. A mean (average) involves adding up all of the numbers and dividing the result by how many numbers were in the list.

Mean averages are useful because they place the same value on every number they use, giving a good overall indication of the gender pay gap.

But very high or low hourly pay can ‘dominate’ and distort the figure. For ECL the data is showing on average men get paid a 6.96% higher hourly rate than women.

The median gender pay gap figure is the difference between the hourly pay of the median full-pay relevant man and the hourly pay of the median full-pay relevant woman. The median for each is the man or woman who is in the middle of a list of hourly pay ordered from highest to lowest paid.

Medians are useful to indicate what the ‘typical’ situation is. They are not distorted by very high or low hourly pay. For ECL the data shows a 0.18%

bas towards women.

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Having a high percentage of women staff shows ECL has a gender bias towards women. This will distort the mean gender pay gap figures as they look at averages. This is why it is important to look at the median figures alongside the mean.

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Total Employees Split by Percentage of Men and Women

% Male % Female

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The chart above shows the men/women split by service. Please note however that for this chart the data used represents all men/women staff by service not just those who met the criteria for gender pay gap reporting. This was due to that data not being available in time from Access Payroll.

From the data in the table most departments consist of higher numbers of women to men, with exception to CES where the team consists of 76%

men. This is likely due to the type of work in that team, where most of the roles are Warehouse and Driver/Fitter positions which are predominantly male by nature.

30 27

14

76

14

4 9

70 73

86

24

86

96 91

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Clinical Team Corporate &

Contact Centre

IE&DO CES Reablement Sensory Supported Living

Men/Women Split by Service

% Male in the Team % Women in the Team

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The table and chart above show our overall mean and median gender pay gap based on hourly rates of pay. The national gender pay gap¹ currently stands at 15.5% for all employees.

In ECL men have the largest mean, showing men have the biggest difference between average hourly earnings than women, earning 6.96%

more. In monetary terms this means that the mean hourly difference in ordinary pay is £0.80 per hour.

In ECL women have the largest median, showing women have the biggest difference in midpoints in the ranges of hourly earnings than men earning 0.18% more. In monetary terms this means equates to £0.02 per hour.

14.11

11.18 13.13

11.2

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Mean Median

Hourly Rate (£)

Mean & Median Pay

Male Female

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Both these figures show there is only a very small difference in hourly rate between men and women in terms of average hourly rate and differences in the mid-points.

The Gender Pay Quartiles For ECL

Pay quartiles are pay bands for staff from the lowest paid to the highest paid. Eligible employees are allocated into pay band quartiles by way of rankings based on their hourly rate of pay. The quarterly pay bands show the proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.

22% 18% 20% 21%

78% 82% 80% 79%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Upper (75-100%) Upper Middle (50-75%) Lower Middle (25-50%) Lower (0-25%)

Percentages of Men & Women

Gender Pay Quartiles

(Percentages of Men & Women)

Male Female

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The chart above shows the percentage of men and women across different pay quartiles.

Pay quartiles are where an organisation is split into four equally sized groups of employees based on their hourly earnings and then the gender split is recorded.

For ECL, the data shows there are higher percentages of women than men, across all four quartiles which means that women are paid more favourably than men in each.

Employer

% Women in lower

pay quartile

% Women in lower middle pay

quartile

% Women in upper middle pay

quartile

% Women in top pay

quartile

ECL 2018 79 80 82 78

ECL 2021 82 73 82 67

79 82 80 82 78

73

82

67

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

% Women in lower pay quartile % Women in lower middle pay quartile

% Women in upper middle pay quartile

% Women in top pay quartile

ECL Pay Quartiles in 2021 Compared to 2018

ECL 2018 ECL 2021

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The chart and table above show the changes in percentages between men and women from 2018 to date. The data shows that since 2018 there has been a slight increase in women in the lower pay quartile in 2021 than 2018. In each of the other quartiles there has been a decrease percentage of women, with the exception to the upper middle quartile which has remained the same.

The distribution of men and women in the pay quartiles continues to illustrate that ECL’s pay gap is largely as a result of a higher concentration of women than men.

The chart above shows the proportion of men in each of the quartiles in ECL. The data shows the average pay for men is very evenly spread across all of the quartiles.

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22

25 26

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Percentage of Men per Quartile

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The chart below shows the proportion of women in each of the same quartiles. The data shows the average pay for women is very evenly spread across all of the quartiles.

The data shows broadly that the average pay for men and women across all the quartiles is evenly spread and doesn’t show biases on either gender.

24 26 25 25

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Percentage of Women per Quartile

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The above charts and table illustrate the gender and pay distribution at ECL across four equally sized quartiles.

Lower: Of the 272 employees in the lower hourly pay quarter, 215 are women and 57 are men. This means that 79% are women and 21% are men.

Lower Middle: Of the 273 employees in the lower middle hourly pay quarter, 219 are women and 54 are men. This means that 80% are women and 20% are men.

Upper Middle: Of the 273 employees in the upper middle hourly pay quarter, 224 are women and 49 are men. This means that 82% are women and 18% are men.

60 49 54 57

212 224 219 215

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Numbers of Employees

Gender Pay Quartiles (Numbers of Employees)

Male Female

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Upper: Of the 272 employees in the upper hourly pay quarter, 212 are women and 60 are men. This means that 78% are women and 22% are men.

It is interesting to see it is women who are in the highest percentage of hourly pay within every quartile, and therefore at all levels of the hierarchy in the organisation, since pay tends to increase in line with hierarchy.

Outside of the Care sector, this would typically be the case for men rather than women, so it is useful to look at ECL’s competitor data to see if ECL’s data is typical for the Care Sector.

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How ECL compares to our Competitors

It is useful to know how ECL compares to some of its competitors in terms of gender pay gap. The data below shows the gender pay gap or some of ECL’s competitors across 2019-2020.

The official deadline for gender pay gap reporting has been extended from April, the usual month of submission, to October 2021 so ECL is one of the first to report on this, current comparators are not yet available but will be reviewed at the mid-year and any major changes in outcome will result in a gender pay gap update paper in November if required.

76 76 74 72

47.6

23.4

33.2

45

86 88

82

79 80 82 75

78

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

% Women in lower pay quartile % Women in lower middle pay quartile

% Women in upper middle pay quartile

% Women in top pay quartile

Competitor Gender Pay Gap Quartiles 2019-2020

ROYAL MENCAP SOCIETY MILLBROOK HEALTHCARE LTD NELFT ECL

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There was limited gender pay gap data available from ECL’s competitors due to there being no requirement to post last year due to the pandemic, however companies could still choose to if they wished. This years’

posting deadline has been moved to October 2021, so competitor data is as yet unavailable for this year either.

It has been possible to source gender pay gap data from 3 of ECL’s competitors for 2019-2020; Royal Mencap Society, who employ between 5,000 to 19,999 staff, Millbrook Healthcare Ltd who employ between 500 and 999 staff and NELFT who employ 5,610 staff.

The charts above show that it appears ECL has similarities with Royal Mencap Society and NELFT’s gender pay gap, showing the similar trajectories as ECL in all quartiles. Royal Mencap Society and NELFT do, however, have significantly more employees than ECL, although the use of percentages can mitigate some effects of this.

Millbrook Healthcare, although with similar numbers of staff to ECL, is showing it has more men in every pay quartile than men. The data does not explain why this could be and this was unavailable.

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How ECL’s Gender Pay Gap in March 2021 Compares to Previous ECL Gender Pay Gap Data in 2018

There was no ECL report available for 2019, but it was also possible to locate and compare against ECL’s Gender Pay Gap Report from 2018, therefore, to offer some comparison, the 2018 data has been used to compare to the data in this report for 2021.

Employer Employer Size

% Difference in hourly rate

(Mean)

% Difference in hourly rate

(Median)

ECL 2018 764 14 0

ECL 2021 1259 6.96 -0.18

The figures look quite different this year to 2018 and this is for the following reasons;

• In 2018, the dataset used related to pay information from 1 April 2016 to 31st March 2017 with a snapshot date of 17 June 2017.

This report uses a dataset relating to pay information on the snapshot date of 31st March 2021 covering the reference period of one-month 1st to 31st March 2021. This is inline with the ‘relevant period’ of reporting set out in this year’s Government guidance.

•

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• As this year’s snapshot date falls in March this year, ECL were not required to report on bonus payments as these are payable outside

of the ‘relevant period’ of reporting, in June 2021. The bonus figures have been included in the 2018 report. This will impact the average pay figures.

• The data shows ECL has significantly grown in headcount since 2018. This will impact the mean or average figures as there are more employees to calculate the average pay over.

It is difficult to do a comparison when the data sets are over different lengths of time and don’t include the same pay variables.

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Circumstances that Impact on the Gender Pay Gap

There can be many causes for the gender pay gap. The list below is ranked with the highest impact to ECL in reducing the gender pay gap at the top, along with recommendations for action following in section 6;

• Recruitment – uneven distribution of jobs between men and women is key to the maintenance of gender disparities. Gender bias against men or women can limit those short-listed for interview, lead to selection decisions that favour men and result in men being offered higher starting salaries. For ECL, the largest population will be in the CCA roles, therefore it is not surprising these roles tend to be taken up more commonly by women. This could be because more girls are encouraged into Social Care subjects at College than boys and also because these roles tend to fit nicely around childcare as they can offer more flexibility with hours and shifts in the rotas. This would help to explain the lower quartile results. It could be that as ECL’s Recruitment policy to recruit internally first and then externally, is encouraging this trend to continue, as more men than women then become promoted to other positions including manager roles. (See Appendix 1 which takes a sample of some of the main roles within ECL and compares the percentages of men and women in those roles). Careers advice to girls can also lead them towards occupations or industries that are believed by Advisors to be more suitable for women. It can be argued that Care Sector work could fall

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into this category as research by Anchor Hanover published in September 2019, revealed that 35% of the public still believe care is a “woman’s career”, while 85% of men say they would not consider a career in care.

https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2019/nov/20/jobs-for-the- boys-the-drive-to-get-more-men-into-social-care-roles

• Learning and development – A limitation of learning opportunities for men or women can contribute to a gender pay gap by restricted access to more skills and therefore better paid jobs. For the Care Sector, the problem can often start at school where fewer boys tend to opt for Social Care subjects than girls resulting in a smaller pool of men to recruit from in the labour market than women. This can be evidenced by Ofsted reports which show that in 2013, there were 1.1% of girls choosing to take up ‘Other Social Studies’ compared to 0.8% of boys.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system /uploads/attachment_data/file/426646/A_level_subject_take-up.pdf

• Pay increase decisions – when there is flexibility for managers to make individual and discretionary decisions on pay, this could lead to gender pay gaps. For example, Appendix 1 shows that most of the operational managers are women. If they are making decisions about starting pay, they could be bias towards other women.

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• Lack of transparency – being secretive about pay structures allows gender pay gaps to flourish. ECL publishes their pay bands on the Intranet which keeps them open and transparent and therefore helping to reduce the gender pay gap.

• Greater numbers of women in low-paid part-time jobs is usually a major factor for organisations, usually, in widening the gender pay gap. For ECL part time work is often more suitable for women. With CCA roles tending to be part-time, this could be why ECL have more women than men in the low-paid part time roles.

• Lack of men or women in high paid jobs. For ECL the data shows there are more women in all the pay quartiles than men but overall, it is evenly spread men to women across each of the quartiles. This is a good trend to see as it doesn’t indicate a concern with gender pay gap.

• Return to work after maternity leave – a major problem for women returning from maternity leave is that they may have missed out on opportunities for promotion and opportunities to gain more experience and acquire more skills. They in effect lose ground with their male colleagues who have remained at work. The pay of those colleagues is likely to have gone up during the leave period too especially if incremental pay scales are in place. This does not

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appear to be a factor for ECL, which is evident from the data in the pay quartiles section of this report.

• Performance management – there can be bias, conscious, or

unconscious, by women against men when rating performance and potential, which can restrict pay increases and reduce promotion prospects. In ECL since the majority of staff are women, this is less likely to be of concern.

Actions and Recommendations to Reduce the Gender Pay Gap Area Possible actions by ECL

Recruitment

• Introduce ‘blind’ applications, i.e. interviewers are not told the name, sex, age or race group of applicants.

• Issue clear guidelines on recruitment starting salaries which emphasise that all applicants have to be treated the same.

• Monitor proposed starting salaries and question any apparent biases. Currently ECL has pay bands for each grade, but managers are still free to choose the starting salary between these bands. This is, however, unlikely to have a significant impact of gender bias as ECL formally

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into them. Additionally, the median salaries are very close so this would suggest that within grade boundaries salaries are almost exactly even between genders.

• Target men in recruitment campaigns to close the gender pay gap within ECL.

• Use robust short-listing & Interview criteria that differentiates between skill and experience and eliminates any chance of gender biases creeping in. The Recruitment team could provide robust short-list criteria in the form of a matrix to the Recruiting Manager. This would provide a record to show how recruitment decisions were legitimately made based on skill and experience alone rather than gender.

• Narrow the gap by running internal recruitment alongside external recruitment.

Pay

Transparency

Continue to be transparent on pay structures and banding.

Pay increase decisions

• Monitor proposed increases, particularly within the pay bands, to detect and correct any pay biases.

• PMR salary/bonus increases are applied based on met/exceeds so there aren’t any specific risks

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to gender bias in this approach that need remedied. The recommendation here is to continue to use unbiased PMR salary/bonus increase methodology relating to annual PMR increase process.

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Assumptions and Limitations

• The figures provided are only based on ‘relevant employees’ who were employed on the snapshot date.

• ‘Relevant employees’ have been counted on an individual basis, not as full time equivalents. This means that each part-time employee, including job-sharers, employed on the snapshot date have counted as one employee.

• The data in this report only relates to the ‘relevant pay period’ which consists of one month’s worth of data around a snapshot date in March 2021. This limits the data set to analyse for trends

• Earnings not yet paid or that were paid in earlier periods were not included, so for ECL this meant excluding bonus payments from the data set

• The data excludes those employees who were receiving less than full pay as this would otherwise have distorted the data.

• Comparator data was limited due to the changes in reporting requirements for this year. ECL is publishing its gender pay gap data earlier than required which has meant other comparator data is not

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yet available for this year. Additionally, last year there was no requirement to report.

• The raw data set behind ECL’s gender pay gap statistics was not available from Access payroll, therefore The chart showing the men/women split by service used data representing all men/women by service not just those who met the criteria for gender pay gap reporting.

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Appendix 1.

Table to show Men v Women in a sample selection of some of the key role types in ECL.

Role Women Men

Total in the

role

%age Women in

the role

%age Men in the role

CCA's 258 39 297 87 13

Service

Managers 15 3 18 83 17

LBM's 45 4 49 92 8

ABM's 4 0 4 100 0

RBM's 3 2 5 60 40

87 83

92

100

60

13 17

8

0

40

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

CCA's Service Managers LBM's ABM's RBM's

Percentage of Men & Women in Selected Key Role Types in ECL

%age Women in the role %age Men in the role

ECL s Gender Pay Gap Report

ECL’s Gender Pay Gap Report

Contents

Gender Pay Quartiles