Welsh Section Title Gender Pay Gap Report 2020 Gender Pay Gap Report 2020 Appendix 1

GENDER PAY GAP 2020

An organisation is required to publish its gender pay gap annually for the previous year.

This report sets out the Council’s gender pay gap for 2020.

What is a Gender Pay Gap?

A gender pay gap is a measure of the difference in the average pay of men and women across an organisation.

The Council’s gender pay gap is reported as:

The mean gender pay gap

The median gender pay gap

The proportion of males and females in each quartile pay band.

The gender pay gap is calculated using gross hourly rate of pay.

It captures pay differences between men and women, irrespective of their role or seniority. It is a measure across all jobs in an organisation. It is not the measures of the difference in pay between men and women for doing the same job. For example, an organisation that is over-populated by men in higher paid/senior roles and women in lower paid roles, will have a gender pay gap in favour of men.

The gender pay gap can be positive or negative. If it is a positive figure, this means that on average, men’s earnings are higher than those of women and if the pay gap is negative, on average, women’s earnings are higher than those of men.

What is the Mean Gender Pay Gap and the Median Gender Pay Gap?

The mean pay gap is the difference in the average hourly rate between men and women.

The median pay gap is the difference between the midpoint in the ranges of hourly rates of men and women. The median is the middle value of pay which splits the top 50% of the workforce from the bottom 50%.

What are Pay Quartiles?

As part of gender pay gap reporting, we are required to publish pay quartiles. Pay quartiles are created by ranking each relevant employee in order of their gross hourly rates of pay, and then dividing those employees into four equal groups from the lowest paid to the highest paid. They show the proportions of men and women in each of four equal pay quartiles (lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile).

How did we calculate the Gender Pay Gap?

The data is based on the pay period in which March 31st falls.

The elements of pay used to calculate the Gender Pay Gap is referred to as ordinary pay.

Ordinary Pay:

The pay elements included: basic pay, pay for leave and shift premium pay and allowances such as first aid, standby payments.

The pay elements excluded: Overtime and allowances earned during paid overtime hours, remuneration related to redundancy or termination of employment, expenses, pay in lieu of annual leave or any arrears of pay.

Who has been included in the calculations?

The pay data for 2020 is a snapshot as at 31st March 2020.

The Council employed (all employees) 6,421 employees, at March 31st 2020, which includes 1766 (27.5%) males and 4655 (72.5%) females.

The Council workforce, excluding schools, was 3,630 employees, at March 31st 2020, which represents 1290 (35.5%) males and 2340 (64.5%) females.

The pay data excludes casual employees.

Our Gender Pay Gap

Appendix 1 sets out the Council’s gender pay gap reported as the mean, median and pay quartiles and shows the pay gap for:

All employees excluding schools; and

all employees including schools.

It is worth nothing that we are not required to report on the gender pay gap in schools but we have chosen to include this data for information.

Our Mean Gender Pay Gap

2020	2019
All employees (excluding schools)	7.2%	9.15%
All employees (including schools)	11.22%	12.15%

Our mean gender pay gap (excluding school employees) shows that on average, women earn 7.2% per hour less than men. In other words, on average, a female would earn 93p for every £1 earned by a male employee.

Our Median Gender Pay Gap

2020	2019
All employees (excluding schools)	3.44%	3.93%
All employees (including schools)	9.54%	9.25%

The median pay gap is the number that is the midpoint when all employees’ hourly rates of pay are lined up from lowest to highest.

For example, Appendix 1 shows that our median (midpoint) hourly rate for our male employees (excluding schools) is £12.79 and for our female employees, £12.35. This represents a median gender pay gap of 3.44%.

Including schools, our median pay gap is 9.54%.

Our Pay Quartiles

The pay quartiles in Appendix 1 show the percentage of men and women that make up each equal pay quartile.

For example, (excluding schools), the top quartile (highest paid) is made up of 59% women and 41% men and the lower quartile (lowest paid) is made up of 72% women and 28% men. The latter shows that a significantly higher proportion of women fall in the lowest paid quartile.

All employees which includes schools, shows that 67% women and 33% men fall into the top quartile and 88% women and 12% men fall into the lower quartile.

Gender Pay Gap across the UK

For comparison purposes, the Office of National Statistics has measured the UK’s gender pay gap (median pay) as being 17.9% in 2018, 17.4% in 2019 and 15.5% in 2020.

Our Commitment

Whilst the Council’s Gender Pay Gap is lower than the UK’s median gender pay gap, we are committed to closing the gap.

On January 14th 2019, the Personnel Committee gave approval for the Council to subscribe to the ‘Chwarae Teg Fair Player Scheme’.

Chwarae Teg is currently working alongside the council and has helped develop a bespoke ‘Gender Equality Action Plan’ with evidence based actions to improve gender equality and reduce the Council’s gender pay gap. The council was awarded the Chwarae Teg Silver Award for Gender Equality in 2020, which underlines the council’s commitment to improving gender diversity in the workplace.