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 colleagues the real living wage and have delivered salary increases to support people with the cost-of-living crisis.
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 colleagues the real living wage and have delivered salary increases to support people with the cost-of-living crisis.
What is the Group’s Gender Pay Gap?
We’re very proud to see our 2022/23 gender pay gap reduce from last year. Both our mean and median pay gaps are lower, with our median pay gap sitting below the national average for not-for-profit organisations.
We remain committed to doing everything we can to reduce the gap further and have worked hard to understand our results, what they tell us and what our priorities need to be for the next 12 months.
What is the Group’s Gender Pay Gap?
We’re very proud to see our 2022/23 gender pay gap reduce from last year. Both our mean and median pay gaps are lower, with our median pay gap sitting below the national average for not-for-profit organisations.
We remain committed to doing everything we can to reduce the gap further and have worked hard to understand our results, what they tell us and what our priorities need to be for the next 12 months.
Median pay gap 2022/23
Mean pay gap 2022/23
Pay gaps for protected characteristics
Once again, we’ve proactively and voluntarily measured pay gaps for all protected characteristics, where possible, as defined by the 2010 Equality Act. This ensures we can identify any gaps that exist and better understand how to address them. Last year, this crucial work illustrated that our median ethnicity pay gap was significantly above the national average and required our urgent attention.
We’re pleased to see our mean ethnicity pay gap has reduced slightly this year, but we still have considerable work to do in this area. We’re currently redrafting our gender and equalities action plan to tackle this issue.
Understanding our pay gap
The make-up of our Group makes it particularly challenging to tackle our gender pay gap. We continue to appoint based on an individual’s ability to do the job, and we’re satisfied that our gender pay gap is due to the under-representation of a particular gender in certain roles, rather than another underlying reason.
As a significant provider of care and support services across the Midlands and East of England, a high number of our colleagues work in that sector. As with society in general, most of these roles tend to be lower paid and occupied by women.
We remain committed to addressing this imbalance by doing all we can to attract and recruit colleagues of both genders into this fantastic profession, which is a much-valued part of our organisation.
Women in senior roles
We’ve always been an organisation where women can and do progress into senior roles.
Women are well represented in our leadership teams, with three on our Executive Team and 10 female directors. Four of the 11 seats on our Group Board, including our chair, are also occupied by women.
We know that reducing our gender pay gap remains a significant challenge, but it’s one that we’re absolutely committed to tackling to make Longhurst Group an inclusive environment where colleagues are supported.
How does the housing provider support the physical and mental health of their staff?
At Longhurst Group we understand the importance of supporting our colleagues with their health and wellbeing, as well as enhancing their economic resilience.
We enrol everyone onto our health cash plan, which the Group pays for. This plan allows colleagues to claim money back on a range of health and wellbeing costs, including optical, dental, chiropody, sports massage and acupuncture. The plan also provides access to Best Doctors, enabling colleagues to get a second opinion from world-leading medical specialists, along with a 24-hour DoctorLine service which gives access to a GP helpline from a practicing UK GP.
In addition, all colleagues have access to counselling and support services, along with a 24-hour telephone line for confidential help and advice on medical, legal and domestic issues and online health and wellbeing resources.
All colleagues have access to free confidential financial education, covering all areas, including mortgages, retirement planning, pensions, saving and investments, insurance and will writing.
This year, we’ve launched mental health for manager development sessions and will introduce further awareness sessions for all colleagues in the coming months. We also provide and promote fully funded Level 2 distance learning sessions on a range of topics, including Awareness of Mental Health Problems, Mental Health First Aid and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace.
How does the housing provider support the physical and mental health of their staff?
At Longhurst Group we understand the importance of supporting our colleagues with their health and wellbeing, as well as enhancing their economic resilience.
We enrol everyone onto our health cash plan, which the Group pays for. This plan allows colleagues to claim money back on a range of health and wellbeing costs, including optical, dental, chiropody, sports massage and acupuncture. The plan also provides access to Best Doctors, enabling colleagues to get a second opinion from world-leading medical specialists, along with a 24-hour DoctorLine service which gives access to a GP helpline from a practicing UK GP.
In addition, all colleagues have access to counselling and support services, along with a 24-hour telephone line for confidential help and advice on medical, legal and domestic issues and online health and wellbeing resources.
All colleagues have access to free confidential financial education, covering all areas, including mortgages, retirement planning, pensions, saving and investments, insurance and will writing.
This year, we’ve launched mental health for manager development sessions and will introduce further awareness sessions for all colleagues in the coming months. We also provide and promote fully funded Level 2 distance learning sessions on a range of topics, including Awareness of Mental Health Problems, Mental Health First Aid and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace.