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 recent introduction of a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion forum, we want to advance our ways of thinking at all levels of the business and influence our diversity and Inclusive strategy in the future for the better.
What is the Gender Pay Gap?
A gender pay gap is the difference between the Mean (average) and Median pay of all women’s and men’s earnings, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. Results are calculated by taking into account both the average and median pay rates of all men working in the company and comparing it with the average and median 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. As required, we also produce 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, they happen to be employed in higher paid jobs. The concentration of a small number of men in such jobs causes our average male salary to be higher than the average female salary. There is no difference in hourly pay rates between the genders in our factory and retail teams although we employ fewer males than females in retail.
At Neal’s Yard Remedies, 77.9% of our whole team is female, with 45.6% of this total working within our retail stores. This is a general trend seen across the beauty and wellbeing retail sector within the UK.
Neal’s Yard Remedies Mean and Median Pay Gap
As shown, our mean (average) gender pay gap is 26.8%, which is higher than the UK average gender pay gap of 13.9% (April 2022 Estimate). This is an increase for Neal’s Yard by 4.1% from last year.
Our median pay gap decreased by 9.9% from April 2021 to 2022 for all employees. The UK median gap decreased by 0.2% from 15.1% (April 2021) to 14.9% (April 22 Est.), meaning we are below the UK average in 2022.
To compare our figures, we are using the Office for National Statistics figures based upon the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2022.
We have seen an increase in the mean percentage pay gap this year as a result of a change in personnel at the most senior level, that had a significant adverse impact. Whilst we continue to attract women overall, we acknowledge we do need to do more in attracting women into our senior roles.
The reduction in our median pay gap by almost 10%, is due to the work we’ve completed over the last few years to implement comparable pay bands for our hourly paid staff. The figures are also influenced by the gender make up of our hourly paid staff with more male staff working within the higher pay bands.
Our mean bonus pay gap for April 2022 is 68.2% However, this has been disproportionally impacted by a senior bonus payment. Removing this reduces our mean bonus to -61.71%. This is explained by retail being the main part of the business where bonuses are awarded and the majority of our retail workforce are female.
51% of women in our business receive a bonus, compared to only 15% of men.
Neal’s Yard Remedies What can we do better?
We continue to manage our Gender Pay by ensuring that our roles are carefully benchmarked to the market, and recruitment processes are fair, open, and attractive to all applicants.
This year, we have implemented our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plans. Although these plans are at an early stage, we are confident that a comprehensive D, E & I strategy, including further improvements in our environment to ensure everyone feels they belong, will continue to move us forward. This will include developing our recruitment channels and networks to ensure we encourage a more diverse group of candidates for all our positions at Neal’s Yard Remedies.
