Barchester Healthcare's Gender Pay Gap Report 2017/18

“At Barchester Healthcare, we believe in creating a diverse and gender balanced workforce which reflects the diverse customers and communities that we serve and provides the culture in which our staff can thrive. 

We have a small gender pay gap in comparison to the national average but we realise that there is still work to do and we have developed a range of diversity and inclusion initiatives to achieve this.  We have already started to see the benefits of some of our initiatives and we are working hard to make sure that this continues.

Our Gender Pay Gap figures have been calculated in line with the regulations set out in the gender pay gap reporting legislation. I confirm that these figures have been verified and are accurate.“

Dr Pete Calveley
​CEO

Gender Pay Reporting

Under new laws welcomed by Barchester Healthcare, employers in the UK with 250 or more employees are now required to report gender pay gap information.

The gender pay gap looks at the difference in the average earnings received by male and female employees, irrespective of their role or seniority.  It is therefore distinct from equal pay, which compares men and women carrying out equivalent work.  

We are confident that men and women are paid equally for doing the same job.  However, the greater proportion of men than women in our senior executive positions creates a gender pay gap.

We are therefore committed to continuing to improve diversity and inclusion within our organisation and recognise that gender pay reporting is an important tool to help us understand our own business and to assist us in attracting, retaining and developing a diverse workforce. 

The statistics reported below are based on a snapshot of data taken on 5th April 2017.

Mean and Median Gender Pay Gap

The mean pay gap is the difference between average hourly pay of men and women.  The median pay gap is the difference between the midpoints in the ranges of hourly pay of men and women.  It takes all earnings in the sample, lines them up in order from lowest to highest and picks out the middle earnings.

  Mean  Median National Average
Gender Pay Gap 7.62% 1.55% 18.10%

The main reasons underlying our mean and median gender pay gaps are that there are more women than men in our lower paid roles and at all leadership levels in Barchester except at the senior executive level where there are a greater number of men than women. Therefore the mean pay gap, in particular, is skewed by a small number of men on senior executive salaries. 

The median pay gap is less influenced by outliers and therefore is more representative of our workforce and at 1.55% is significantly below the national average of 18.1%.  

Mean and Median Gender Bonus Gap

  Mean Median
Bonus Gap 33.85% 17.51%

The makeup of the Company coupled with the bonus schemes we offer also affects our bonus pay gap.  Our mean and median gender bonus gaps are significantly affected by the fact that the majority of senior executives are male and receive greater bonuses due to their higher salaries than other employees and leaders at Barchester, the majority of whom are women.  

Despite this, the proportion of women receiving bonuses as a whole is greater than the percentage of men receiving bonuses, as illustrated by the pie charts shown below.

Proportion of employees receiving bonuses

Proportion of Males and Females in Pay Quartiles

The pie charts set out below show the gender split when we order hourly rate of pay from highest to lowest and group the workforce into four equal pay quartiles.

In line with most care home providers, the majority of our workforce is female throughout all four quartiles.  This includes 77% of our senior managers who are female.  

It is therefore important that we make sure that males are given the same access as females to care worker roles, which is the largest populated role in the organisation.  

At the same time we recognise that there is a smaller proportion of women in the most senior executive positions, which we want to change.  

How we are addressing the gender pay gap

While our gender pay gap is significantly better than the national average, Barchester as an organisation, remain committed to diversity and inclusion and we have therefore developed the following initiatives to try to increase gender diversity further: 

  1. Evolving senior executive recruitment processes to ensure diverse talent is identified
  2. Developing a new talent management strategy of which diversity will form a part
  3. Reviewing and developing diversity and inclusion policies and practices
  4. Developing and promoting an inclusive culture through family friendly policies such as flexible working arrangements
  5. Reviewing and benchmarking pay and bonuses to ensure equal pay
  6. Analysis of exit interview data for underlying trends of reasons for leaving which can then be addressed

We will continue to scrutinise our gender pay gap and explore ways to improve.