Media organisation ITN has reported a 19.6% mean gender pay gap for fixed hourly pay.
The organisation has reported its gender pay gap data in line with the government’s gender pay gap reporting regulations and ahead of the private sector submission deadline of 4 April 2018.
The gender pay gap reporting regulations require organisations with 250 or more employees to publish the difference between both the mean and median hourly rate of pay for male and female full-time employees; the difference between both the mean bonus pay and median bonus pay for male and female employees; the proportions of male and female employees who were awarded bonus pay; and the proportions of male and female full-time employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.
ITN’s median gender pay gap for fixed hourly pay is 18.2%.
Its mean gender pay gap for bonuses paid over the reporting period is 77.2%, and the median gender pay gap for bonus payments is 50%. During this time frame, 38.5% of female employees received a bonus payment compared to 31.4% of male employees, however ITN’s analysis proves that women’s bonus amounts were on average of a lower value than men’s bonus payments.
More than a third (34.5%) of employees in the highest pay quartile at ITN are female, compared to 31.7% in the second quartile, 44.5% in the third quartile and 59.1% in the lowest pay quartile. In total, 44% of ITN’s workforce are women.
ITN attributes its gender pay gap to the fact that fewer female employees work in senior leadership roles across the business. The organisation’s analysis shows that if it removes the 20 highest-paid employees from its data, 17 of whom are men, its mean gender pay gap falls to 10.8%.
To address its gender pay gap, ITN has introduced a set of targets. This includes aiming to achieve a 50% reduction in its gender pay gap within five years, striving to have 50% of the 20 top earning roles at the organisation fulfilled by women within five years and to have 33% of the 20 top earning roles occupied by women within the next three years.
ITN will additionally continue to develop a flexible working culture by adjusting rosters and working hours for parents who work full-time, opening all roles to flexible or part-time working, offering pregnant women a maternity mentor, training managers on how to best support women on maternity leave and holding regular roundtable workshops for all staff to discuss ITN’s working culture. The organisation will also introduce a summer family leave policy to facilitate employees taking additional time off for childcare or family reasons during the summer. This will enable employees to work an 11-month year, taking August off, yet having their salary paid over a 12-month period.
ITN will also focus on its recruitment processes to ban appointments that are made without due process, making sure that women are represented on all interview panels and striving to have at least one female candidate shortlisted for every available job role. Furthermore, ITN will review its job descriptions to ensure the language used is gender neutral.
The organisation will implement a transparent pay structure as part of its measures to address gender pay disparities. This will include publishing salary bands for all job roles, publishing the eligibility criteria for bonuses and commission and reviewing the salaries of all women returning from maternity leave. In addition, ITN will regularly review the duration of bureau assignments, create a development programme for high potential staff that includes mentoring, shadowing, internal exposure and external training and developing more opportunities through succession planning, attachments and open processes. The organisation will also offer confidence building and interview technique training.
John Hardie, chief executive officer at ITN, said: “Over the last few years we’ve launched some positive initiatives aimed at course correcting the gender imbalance at the top of ITN. Since 2016, we have given all managers unconscious bias training to increase awareness and to help them make smarter hiring decisions. We have also significantly increased maternity and shared parental leave pay and remain one of the few [organisations] to have equalised shared parental leave pay for men and women so that all parents have equal ability to take time off fully paid at this important time in their lives.
“In 2017 we appointed our first ever diversity and inclusion manager, who is currently overseeing an ambitious programme aimed at increasing the diversity of our workforce at all levels. But we know we must do much more, so that is why we are setting ourselves some tough targets, including reducing our gender pay gap by half over the next five years. We’ll do this by working together to tackle the root causes of the pay gap, as well as creating a culture in which everyone has a voice and equal chance of success.”