2nd April 2019
HR
The gender pay gap is the difference in average earnings between all men and women in an organisation, regardless of their roles. It is based on a series of calculations set out by the government and is significantly influenced by the difference in the number of men and women at various levels.
Equal pay is different from the gender pay gap. Equal pay deals with the pay men and women receive for doing the same or similar roles, or work of equal value. The way the government has asked companies to report means that even when pay is equal, there may still be a gender pay gap.
The government has asked us to do this in certain ways.
The median gender pay gap – If we were to rank our male and female employees separately, from the lowest to the highest paid, the middle paid colleague is the median. The median pay gap is the difference between the male median and female median. The difference is expressed as a percentage and a positive figure indicates there is a pay gap with men earning more than women.
The mean gender pay gap – This shows the difference between the mean, or average, hourly pay for all men compared with all women across an organisation. Like the median, it is expressed as a percentage.
Under the regulations, the way we are asked to calculate the bonus gap uses actual bonus paid across all men and all women. It does not take into account where bonus is pro-rated for part-time hours. We are required to provide both median and mean figures.
Harrison Spinks employ over 600 people throughout the business in various roles. Across the business 86% of all staff are male with females taking up just 14% of total roles which is consistent with last year
The majority of our job roles are the manufacturing of our various products (mattresses, headboards, divans, springs etc.) and of these manufacturing roles 92% of employees are male (compared to 91% last year). The majority of female roles within Harrison Spinks are office jobs such as customer service or Accounts.
We have found that the gender pay gap within Harrison Spinks exists due to the structure of the organisation, with the majority of our senior roles occupied by men. 91% of our board members and some of our most senior job roles are male which is a clear indication that we need to improve the representation of women in senior positions across the business. This is also evidenced in our bonus pay gap, senior positions within the business have larger salaries and a greater bonus potential than manufacturing roles, which are our lowest paying jobs.
All employees are paid according to their job role, not according to their gender. Harrison Spinks are committed to pay equality for the same job roles across the business.
In comparison to last year, we have seen an improvement in the gender pay gap as we have seen a reduction in the mean ordinary pay gender pay gap from 4% to 3.6%. As the figures show, there is a clear indication that there is work to do regarding representation of females at senior levels within Harrison Spinks and we look forward to making sure we look at new and different ways to reach our goals.