Who’s afraid of gender pay gap reporting? Not EasyJet…
Women now make up 47% of the UK workforce (and 57% of first degree graduates), but the disparity between men’s and women’s salaries has stubbornly refused to disappear.
The UK’s average gender pay gap of 19%* is an awkward reminder that, decades after the introduction of workplace equality legislation, men still earn more than women, even for comparable work. And the gap at the top is an even more astonishing 55%, according to the TUC. Its figures show that the best paid 2% of men earn an average of £117,352 a year, compared with the £75,745 paid to their female peers.
*top 2% of earners
Unsurprisingly, a voluntary reporting initiative in 2011 gained little traction. 280 employers signed up but only a handful (including Tesco and PwC) actually published the information. Since then, calls for action have become even louder.
Now the government has lost patience and decided it’s time for companies to come clean. Following its consultation on mandatory pay gap reporting last summer, it plans to introduce new regulations in the coming months. These are due to come into effect next year and will, initially at least, apply to companies with 250 or more employees.
Will greater transparency motivate companies to do more to reduce the gap? The government hopes so, and early indications are that its strategy might just work.
Companies will feel the need to explain what’s causing their pay differential, and may want to provide extra breakdowns of their data to show where they are doing better than the headline number suggests. But explanation of what’s causing the gap won’t be enough to win over the women companies need to attract into more highly skilled and senior jobs. The real issue will be what they are doing to close the gap.
EasyJet’s chief executive Carolyn McCall was the first woman to be voted the most admired leader by her FTSE 100 peers in a recent Management Today poll. So it’s probably no coincidence that the airline has been one of the first to put its head above the parapet in its latest annual report.
The company has shone a spotlight on its not inconsiderable gender pay gap: full-time female pay as a percentage of male pay is 38.6%. The discrepancy is easy explained. Its pilots, 95% of whom are male, earn considerably more than its (mainly female) cabin crew, although there is salary parity between men and women for the same roles.
So what is EasyJet doing to address this? It’s aiming to more than double the proportion of female new pilot recruits to 12% over the next two years. Alongside its usual STEM and mentoring activities, it is working to attract more women to apply for its cadet training, offering 10 places for women each year on a pilot training programme and underwriting the training loan of around £100,000. It will also underwrite retraining loans for qualified female pilots coming in from other airlines so they can learn to fly its A320 type planes.
It’s not a 50% target, but it’s heading in the right direction and backed by a firm, measurable plan. It feels like a good start.
