HMRC and the Treasury are making slow progress towards meeting the Civil Service’s ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer by 2020, according to the latest gender pay gap reporting
The overall mean gender pay gap for the Treasury group has increased by 0.2% from last year to 7.2%. However, the department points out the median pay gap has reduced by 0.2% to 14.6% which is below the national median of 17.9%.
Taking just the Treasury itself, the mean gender pay gap has reduced by 0.6% to 3.7%, but the median pay gap has increased by 0.2% to 9%.
The Treasury says the existing pay gaps do not indicate that men and women are being paid differently for equal work, but as the data below for the Treasury group shows, there is a higher proportion of women in junior grades and lower representation at senior level, which affects the average and median pay for each gender. This has a greater impact on median pay which explains the difference between the mean and median pay gaps.
The increase in bonuses awarded across genders is largely a result a new instant recognition voucher scheme, called Treasury Thanks, which gives managers the ability to reward employees with low value vouchers for good pieces of work.
The report stated: ‘ We recognise there is still progress to be made on the distribution of performance bonuses, the group continues to moderate performance markings and undertake bi-annual reviews of our in-year bonus scheme and the Treasury Thanks voucher scheme, to ensure awards are being awarded fairly and consistently across all groups of staff.’
HMRC’s data, which also includes the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), shows the mean hourly rates pay gap percentage has reduced by just 0.9% from 2018. It now stands at 7.6%, with men receiving £14.76 per hour and women £13.64. The median pay gap has reduced by 3.9%.
The report stated: ‘The combination of the distribution and pay for our workforce continues to drive our mean and median figures and whilst we have a very diverse workforce, a large number of our female workforce remain in the lower pay grades.’
The data shows that the proportion of women paid within each quartile is not consistent with the overall gender composition within HMRC and VOA. In particular, just 46.9% of the upper quartile are women, whereas overall women represent 54.4% of HMRC and VOA.
The median gender bonus pay gap is 6.3% (and was -16.7% in 2018), which for HMRC is due to the large number of ‘Simply Thanks’ vouchers that were issued during the year (‘Simply Thanks’ made up 68% of all bonuses for HMRC).
