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Gender pay gap

Being an inclusive organisation is of utmost importance to Break and it is one of the values of our organisation. The first steps to being inclusive is to hold ourselves to account and understand where and how we could perform better. Our services are founded on relationships, and for that reason, building a diverse and engaged staff team which represents the young people we work with is vital to Break’s success.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap measures the gaps between the average earnings of men and women employed in an organisation, no matter their role or grade. Since 2018, all organisations with more than 250 employees have been required to report on data their gender pay gap.

We calculate the mean gender pay gap by taking the average hourly pay for men and women at Break and the median gender pay gap where hourly pay for men and women is split out and sorted from highest to lowest, the median is found by choosing the middle number from each gender.

The gender pay gap isn’t the same as equal pay, where laws set out to ensure that a man and a woman doing the same job must be paid equally.

The Office for National Statistics estimates the median the national gender pay gap among all employees at 14.9% in 2022 (Gender pay gap in the UK - Office for National Statistics).

A note about how we are required to report the gender pay gap: government regulations state that all colleagues must be categorised as ‘male’ or ‘female’ for the purpose of these calculations. We acknowledge that some of our colleagues don’t belong to these binary gender categories. At Break, we’re committed to equality, diversity and inclusion in everything we do. We want everyone to find Break a place they feel comfortable and safe to work, irrespective of any protected characteristic, including gender identity. We will continue to take steps to ensure that Break is a place where people can be themselves and feel like they belong.

How are Break performing?

For 2023’s calculation, we looked at the salary of 352 staff members. This data has been taken from the snapshot date of 5 April 2023. 269 of the 352 individuals were females (76%) and 83 of them were male (24%).

Break have a mean pay gap of 11.3% and a median pay gap of 12.9%. We are currently performing better than the national average, but are committed to reducing that gap even further.

Most of our staff team, work in either social care or retail, which are commonly predominantly female and this is also reflected in the makeup of our staff. Within our management teams this ratio is much more even, with our leadership at 42% male and 58% female, and our senior retail management team, care leadership and care management team all split 50:50.

However due to the much higher ratio of women working in more junior roles, as you can see in the quartile data below, which explains why we see our gender pay gap shifting in favour of males.

Gender pay quartiles allow us to look at the ratio of male and female staff members employed at different levels of the organisation. As you can see from the charts below, there are significantly more females employed than men in every quartile but the proportion of men is significantly lower in the lowest quartile, and it is at its highest in the highest middle quartile.

Bonus pay is applicable to those working in our retail outlets, and we also have an award for exceptional performance and recruitment incentives. In 2023, 34 males received a bonus payment, compared to 106 women. The median bonus gap was -11.1% and the mean bonus gap was -39%, meaning the bonus pay gap was in favour of females.

What initiatives do we already have to improve our gender pay gap?

  • We show the salary of all our roles when recruiting.
  • We have salary scales which are published internally to ensure full pay transparency.
  • Our staff outside services and shops have the option to work flexibly, blending their working days between the office and home depending on where they can work most effectively.
  • Our recruitment processes are based on competencies and we are committed to continuous improvement of our practices.
  • We welcome discussions on flexible working to allow for balance between home life and work life.
  • All staff working in our care division undertake significant training as part of their roles, including level 3, 5 and 7 qualifications depending on their seniority.
  • There are ways for staff to feed back to senior leaders, via the Staff Consultation Forum and annual Employee Engagement Survey.

What initiatives are we planning to improve our gender pay gap?

  • We are putting a focus on keeping and developing the talent of the organisation so when people grow, they can grow with us.
  • We are introducing a new learning and development programme for staff outside the care division.
  • We are reviewing our reward and recognition programme, based on feedback from staff in our Employee Engagement Survey in Summer 2022.
  • We are exploring coaching and mentoring options for our staff.
  • We recognise being diverse at every level of the organisation will improve our work. That means making sure our policies and roles are designed in such a way to be attractive to any person wishing to apply – no matter their gender. As well as ensuring good quality female candidates apply for any senior roles in the organisation, we’d also like to see an increase in good quality male candidates applying for roles in the lower quartiles as well.
  • We are continuing to review our policies to ensure they promote gender equality.
  • We are improving our communications channels to allow us to bring attention to things that are important to our workforce.

Alex Lewczuk
Head of HR

09/01/24