What can managers do to tackle gender pay gaps?

Nigel walked us through his preferred statistical lens for viewing gender equality: the pay quarter breakdown model. Here, you split your workforce into four equal quarters, according to their hourly pay. You then report the percentage of men and women within each. An organisation with a pay gap will show one gender more prominently in the lower pay quarter. 

2. Put your money where your mouth is

Panellist Kristal McNamara is director at the Bristol Women in Business Charter, which offers support on diversity to the likes of Bristol City Council and the NHS. She has also worked with the BSI developing gender equity standards. 

You need to understand your stats, Kristal said, and she urged organisations to take “a human-centred approach, considering the needs of employees”. That means being transparent and committing to do what you say around gender pay.

“When you publish your gender pay gap report, it’s not just an external requirement,” she said. “Your employees are looking at this. If every year you’ve said, ‘We’re going to invest in leadership and helping our women to progress, to help achieve more parity of pay’, and you're not moving that dial year on year, your employees are not going to trust it.”

3. Prepare yourself

Host Roger Burt, diversity and inclusion lead for CMI’s South West Regional Board, recommended using systems thinking and seeing how the various parts connect. It’s one thing having statistical insight, he said. But gender equality is also “about the role we need to play as leaders in preparing ourselves to lead the challenge”. 

“That may require self-awareness and for us to think about what our beliefs and values are,” said Roger, “then to do the same with the people that we lead, in order to work together collectively to improve life chances for everyone.”