Barchester Healthcare's Gender Pay Gap Report 2018/19

“At Barchester Healthcare, we are committed to 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.

Over the past 12 months we have been working hard on a number of important initiatives to support this commitment; further details are summarised at the end of this report.

While we have a small gender pay gap in comparison to the national average, we are working hard to bring this down further.

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

As of last year, employers in the UK with 250 or more employees are required to report gender pay gap information.

The gender pay gap looks at the difference in average earnings received by men and women across the company, regardless of the role they carry out or their seniority. It is not the same thing as equal pay, which looks at whether men and women are paid equally for doing 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 have taken positive steps to address this as detailed below.

The statistics reported below are based on a snapshot of data taken on 5th April 2018.

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	6.9%	1.8%	17.90%

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.

Last year we committed to evolving senior executive recruitment processes to ensure diversity of talent. Anna Shirley joined the Executive team on 16 April 2018 as Marketing & Customer Experience Director and we are delighted that Anna’s appointment reflects greater diversity at the Executive level. We expect this to have an effect on our gender pay data next year once this greater diversity can be recorded in our gender pay gap report.

The median pay gap is less influenced by outliers and therefore is more representative of our workforce and at 1.8% is significantly below the national average of 17.90%.

Mean and Median Gender Bonus Gap

	Mean	Median
Bonus Gap	48.9%	19.9%

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.

The difference between the proportion of men and women receiving bonuses as a whole is negligible, 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. We have made progress towards changing this in the past 12 months but recognise that we could do more.

How we are addressing the gender pay gap

While our gender pay gap is significantly better than the national average, Barchester is committed to diversity and inclusion. We have therefore developed the following initiatives with the aim of increasing gender diversity further:

As outlined in this report, the Executive team has become more balanced in the past 12 months. We will continue to develop and monitor senior executive recruitment processes to ensure diverse talent is identified at the most senior levels of the company.
The company’s Equality and Diversity Policy has been updated and went live on 1 April 2019.
The company’s Flexible Working Policy has been updated and went live on 1 April 2019. In addition, we are rolling out new time and attendance and rostering technology in our homes and hospitals, which will enable our teams to work more flexibly. This will be complete by December 2020.
When recruiting into our homes and hospitals, we undertake local benchmarking to ensure we are competitive in that geography. We aim to pay in the top 25% rate.
Our new people strategy, “Together, People Make Barchester” has been developed and was launched to the company on 14 March 2019 at the first of four “Quality First” conferences. The focus of the strategy is on Barchester becoming an employer of choice in the healthcare sector.