Theme 11
Staff wellbeing
Does the Group provide the Living Wage?
We continue to review our employment offer to ensure it’s as attractive as possible to existing and new colleagues while remaining sustainable to the business. We’re committed to paying all frontline Care and Support colleagues the real living wage and have delivered salary increases to support people with the cost-of-living crisis. Other benefits that support the wellbeing of our colleagues include the introduction of a health cash plan through Westfield Health. Paid for by the Group, the health cash plan allows colleagues to claim money back on a range of health and wellbeing costs, including optical, dental, chiropody, sports massage and acupuncture. Colleagues also have access to counselling and support services and a range of health and wellbeing resources.
What is the Group’s Gender Pay Gap?
Unfortunately our 2021/22 gender pay gap increased from the 2020/21 results. As you’d expect, we’ve put a lot of work into understanding our results and what they tell us. The widening of our pay gap from 2020 is largely due to a significant amount of change with colleagues moving to new roles internally as well as new people joining or leaving the Group. This has created a more uneven distribution of male and female colleagues, resulting in a widening of the pay gap between male and female colleagues. We remain committed to doing everything we can to further narrow the gap in order to provide an inclusive environment where we support our colleagues.
Median pay gap 2021/22
Mean pay gap 2021/22
Pay gaps for protected characteristics
We’ve also proactively and voluntarily measured pay gaps for all protected characteristics, where possible, as defined by the 2010 Equality Act. We did this to ensure we can identify any gaps that exist and better understand how to address them. This crucial work showed us that our median ethnicity pay gap was significantly above the national average and is something that required our urgent attention.
Understanding our pay gap
In 2021, an in-depth review of our results since 2017 identified that our gap is caused by two main factors. As with society in general, the vast majority of our care and support roles tend to be lower paid and occupied by women. However, we remain committed to doing all we can to buck this national trend and we continue to strengthen our efforts to attract more male workers into this fantastic profession. Central to this is our leadership of the national Harry’s Pledge campaign. The campaign calls on providers from across the country to sign up to four central pledges, one of which is specifically focused on the need to further professionalise care. This commitment would include the provision of clear qualifications and career paths, helping care and support to be viewed as a valued career choice for everyone, with improved pay, benefits, and conditions.
Women in senior roles
We’ve always been an organisation where women can and do progress into senior roles. The leadership team that guides our organisation is well-represented by women, with four on the Executive Team, eight female directors and four of the 10 seats on our Group Board – including our chair – occupied by women during the reporting year.