Introduction
At Neal’s Yard Remedies, we strive to be a fair employer offering everyone an equal opportunity to develop to their full potential regardless of gender. By law employers with 250 or more employees are required to publish gender pay gap information each year. We welcome this initiative. With the creation of a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) forum, we strive to advance our ways of thinking at all levels of the business and influence our diversity, equality and inclusion strategy for the better.
How do we assess the gender pay gap?
A gender pay gap is the difference between the mean (or average) and median (middle) pay of all women’s and men’s earnings, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. Results are calculated by considering both the average and median pay rates of all men working in the company and comparing it with the average and median pay rates of all women working in the company.
The difference between the two averages is our mean pay gap and the difference between the middle pay for all men and women is our median pay gap. We also look at the mean and median for bonuses within the company over a 12-month period and compare based on gender.
Does a gender pay gap mean that women are not being paid the same as men for doing the same jobs?
No, but this is a common misconception. Paying a man and a woman differently when they do the same or equivalent work is unlawful under the Equality Act (2010).
When a company has a gender pay gap it does not mean that men and women who do the same job are being paid differently. Whilst the minority of employees in our business are men, on average they’re employed in higher paid positions. The concentration of a small number of men in roles which attract a high salary means our average male salary is higher than the average female salary and bonuses this year. There is no difference in hourly pay rates between the genders in our eco-factory and retail teams, although we employ fewer males than females in retail . Within our eco-factory, there are more job roles at varying skill levels. Given we have more male colleagues working in our factory this means there are more opportunities to move into roles which attract a higher pay band. This in turn increases wages and gender pay variations for this sector when compared to our retail teams.
Our gender pay quartiles
The above table shows the breakdown of gender per pay quartile. The pie chart shows our overall split of gender across the whole business: 77% female and 23% male in total. This data shows us that we have a larger proportion of males in the ‘Upper’ quartile compared to other quartiles. The proportion of females in the ‘Upper’ quartile has increased by 4.1% from 2022 to 2023. This may be due to our recruitment strategy aiming to attract more females into applying for our higher paid roles.
Our workforce breakdown
77% of our total workforce is female. The largest proportion of our workforce is found in our retail stores, where 95% of our employees are female. In the UK, there is a general trend towards beauty and wellbeing retail workers being female, therefore we don’t see this as an anomaly. We continue to work hard to attract employees of all genders across all areas of our business through an unbiased approach to recruitment.
Our 2023 mean and median pay gap
As shown, our mean (average) gender pay gap for 2023 is 23.2%, which is higher than the UK average gender pay gap of 13.2% (April 2023 est). This shows a decrease in gender pay gap of 3.6% between 2022 and 2023.
Our median gender pay gap decreased by 4.1% from April 2022 to 2023 for all employees, which is another decrease year on year from 2021. The UK median gap decreased by 0.1% from 14.4% (April 2022) to 14.3% (April 23 est.)*, meaning we were below the UK average in 2023.
*To compare our figures, we’re using the Office for National Statistics figures based upon the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings
We’ve seen a small decrease in the mean percentage pay gap from April 2022, however we acknowledge this is still 10% higher than the UK average. Our business actions as a result of the April 2022 gender pay report have not fully taken effect: we had more male colleagues in higher paid roles within the leadership team and, whilst we continued to attract women overall, we’ve seen more women move into senior leadership roles this year which will positively impact next year’s reporting. In addition, we’ve continued to create comparable pay bands across our eco-factory and retail teams which has decreased our median pay gap further. This means we’re below the UK average by 4.8% this year.
Our mean and median bonus pay gap
Our mean bonus pay gap for April 2023 is 78.9%. This has been disproportionately impacted by a small number of high-level senior sales roles. Removing just one of these bonuses reduces our mean bonus pay gap by over 52% to just 26.2%. We’re taking positive steps to attract more women into higher level positions, which we believe will reflect in future gender pay reporting.
With the majority of our retail sales team being female, this means over 50% of our female workforce receive a bonus compared to only 15% for males overall.
What can we do better?
We continue to improve our gender pay gap by ensuring that our roles are carefully benchmarked to the market, and our recruitment processes are fair, open, and attractive to all applicants.
This year, we’re continuing to progress with our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) plans to ensure we encourage a more diverse group of candidates for all positions at Neal’s Yard Remedies.
We’ve also continued to work on comparable pay banding across our eco-factory and retail teams which will help to reduce the gender pay gap in the future. And finally, more women have moved into senior leadership roles this year, which will have a positive impact on our gender pay gap report next year.
