Ward Security Gender Pay Act Statement 2018
We are an employer required by law to undertake and publish our Gender Pay Reporting under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.
We are required to publish the results on our own website and the government gender pay website.
This involves carrying out six calculations that show the difference between the average earnings of men and women in our Company based on the reporting criteria; it will not involve publishing individual employee pay data.
Gender Pay Reporting requires our organisation to make calculations based on employee gender. We establish this by using our existing HR and PAYE payroll records.
We can use these results to assess:
- the levels of gender equality in our workplace.
- the balance of male and female employees at different job levels.
- The analysis of gender pay in our Company and to benchmark our position in the challenge across Great Britain to eliminate any gender pay gap.
Gender Pay Act reporting calculations are based on the definition of pay for ‘relevant employees’.
The definition of ‘relevant employees’ is:
- all employees employed by Ward Security on the ‘snapshot’ date which is 5th April 2017, and is required to be published by 4th April 2018.
- all employees who were paid their usual full pay in their pay period that included the snapshot date – these are referred to as ‘full-pay relevant employees’
- whether every relevant employee and full-pay relevant employee identifies as male or female
To be included as a full-pay relevant employee, the employee must be paid their full usual pay during the pay period in which the snapshot date (5th April 2017) falls. If the employee is paid less than their usual rate because of being on leave for that period, they should not be counted as a full-pay relevant employee.
- So, for example, if someone takes fully paid annual leave during the pay period, they are still a full-pay employee. But if they take some unpaid leave during the pay period – and therefore are paid less than their usual rate – they are not full-pay relevant employees. Examples include people on unpaid compassionate leave or unpaid holiday.
- If an employee is on any kind of leave and not being paid their full usual amount in the pay period, they are not full-pay relevant employees. For example, they are paid Statutory Sick Pay or Statutory Maternity Pay which is less than their usual pay.
Gender Pay Act reporting is a measure of the difference between men’s and women’s average earnings across a Company or the labour market.
Equal Pay means that men and women in the same employment performing equal work must receive equal pay, as set out in the Equality Act 2010.
Gender Pay Act reporting and findings should not be confused with Equal Pay as the findings provide explanations where the Gender Pay Act reporting shows variances.
Gender Pay Act Findings for 2017:
This data is based on a snapshot date of 5th April 2017.
There were 430 “full pay relevant employees” employed on the snapshot date for the purposes of the mean and median gender pay gaps and the quartile pay bands – 76 female employees and 354 male employees.
There were 725 “relevant employees” employed on the snapshot date for the purposes of the bonus benchmarks – 96 female employees and 629 male employees.
Findings
| Benchmark | Result | Explanation |
| Mean Gender Pay Gap | -25% | Females were paid 25% more than males per hour as a mean calculation – please refer to Findings Statement below |
| Median Gender Pay Gap | -33% | Females were paid 33% more than males per hour as a median calculation – please refer to Findings Statement below |
| Mean Gender Bonus Gap | 0% | Nothing to report |
| Median Gender Bonus Gap | 0% | Nothing to report |
| Proportion of men and women who received a bonus payment | Female: 0%Male: 0% | Not applicable |
| Proportion of men and women in each quartile pay bands | FemaleMaleA6%94%B13%87%C15%85%D37%63% | Most females were paid an hourly rate which falls within the highest pay quartile (Quartile D) and most men were paid an hourly rate which falls within the lowest paid quartile (Quartile A). |
Summary Statement for 2017:
Our Gender Pay Gap data shows that we have a negative gender pay gap, which means that women were paid more per hour than men, on average.
This is not common practice and not the norm outcome of gender pay gap reporting. This will come down to our industry, similar to the mining or construction industry, where we employ fewer women than men, but the number of women we do employ, are paid higher than the majority male workforce.
All of our data shows a negative gender pay gap and this can be explained when looking at the proportion of men and women in each of the 4 quartile pay bands. We can see from this that the highest % of the female workforce was in the highest paid quartile (Quartile D). There is only a 26% difference between men and women in this quartile (a much lower difference than the other 3 quartiles). Whereas in the lowest paid quartile (Quarter A), 94% of the workforce were men being paid at the lowest pay rates, against only 6% females.
This ‘negative’ gender pay will most certainly be due to the industry we operate in, whereby although we employ less women overall, they will tend to be in higher paying roles. These roles are those such as Front of House, Reception, or in our Head Office support functions such as Finance, HR and Operations Administration. Our Head Office support functions were made up of 44% women and 60% of quartile D (the highest paid quartile) was made up of those female employees.
It is worth noting that pay rates for the majority of our workforce (non-Head Office/back office functions) are set by the client in our commercial contracts and so we as a business, have limited ability to influence and control for setting the pay rates paid to the majority of the workforce, irrespective of the demographic. The window of opportunity for rates of pay is at the tender or contract review stage, however, we are operating in a highly competitive market with small margins.
We pay our employees the pay rate that has been agreed within the commercial contract, at a rate per hour for the site and role within that site. We are able to guide and educate our clients on the pay rates for the industry and about statutory pay increases such as minimum wage increases, but ultimately pay rates are not driven by the business directly.
In addition, we hold the Living Wage Foundation accreditation and our benchmarking shows we operate to pay rates above our industry standard.
In summary, although we employ fewer females to males, the average female pay is based on the higher salary roles and outweighs the average male pay who are non-managerial. We are Equal Opportunity employers and we are committed in ensuring all our employees are paid fairly based on the commerciality of the contract, their job level and responsibilities in partnership with our clients, in the Security industry.
