Barchester Healthcare's Gender Pay Gap Report 2019/20

“At Barchester Healthcare, we recognise the benefits of a diverse and gender balanced workforce to reflect our residents and patients and the communities in which we work.

We have continued our focus on a number of important initiatives to build on our work in creating a more diverse workforce; further details are set out in this report.

While we have a small gender pay gap in comparison to the national average, we continue to work 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

The gender pay gap looks at the difference in average earnings received by men and women across the company, regardless of their role or seniority. It is distinct from equal pay, which looks at whether men and women are paid equally for doing work of equal value.

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 continue to take positive steps to address this as detailed below.

The statistics in this report are based on a snapshot of data taken on 5th April 2019.

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 the median is the mid-point.

The main reasons underlying our mean and median gender pay gaps are that there are more women than men in our caring, support work and administrative roles, which tend to be lower paid roles, consistent with our industry. There are nonetheless more women at all leadership levels in Barchester, except Executive Board level, where there are a greater number of men than women.

Therefore the mean pay gap, in particular, is influenced 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 3% is significantly below the national average of 17.3%.

Mean and Median Gender Bonus Gap

The nature of our workforce 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 the most senior executives are male and receive the largest bonuses due to their higher salaries, compared to other employees and leaders at Barchester, the majority of whom are women.

The mean gender bonus gap is significantly affected this year by payments made to board level executives under long term retention arrangements put in place in 2017. However, the median bonus gap has narrowed considerably from 20% in 2018 to 14% for 2019 and more female employees receive a bonus (73%), compared to male employees (68%).

Proportion of Males and Females in Pay Quartiles

The table below shows the gender split when we order hourly rate of pay from highest to lowest and group the workforce into four equal pay quartiles. This is also illustrated by the pie charts.

In line with most care home providers, the majority of our workforce is female throughout all four quartiles. This includes 64% of our senior managers who are female.

We are therefore keen to ensure that men are given the same access as women 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 last two years 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 actively working to promote diversity and inclusion. We have therefore continued to build on the following initiatives to promote gender diversity:

1. We have restructured our senior leadership team since the snapshot date of 5 April 2019. At that time, it comprised the Executive Board of five roles, performed by three men and two women. With effect from December 2019, we have expanded the senior leadership with a newly constituted Executive Team, comprising the Executive Board and seven more senior leaders. The Executive Team has seven women and five men. We see this as a significant move to bring greater diversity to the senior leadership of the company.
2. We will continue to develop and monitor senior executive recruitment processes to promote diversity at the most senior levels of the company.
3. The company’s Equality and Diversity Policy and Flexible Working Policy were updated and went live on 1 April 2019. The Office for National Statistics classifies anyone working 30 hrs per week or less as part time. Barchester therefore has 7,146 employees working part time with 9,800 working full time. Of the part time employees, 6,296 are female and 850 are male. We will continue to promote flexible working for men and women through our recruitment processes and facilitate requests via our flexible working policy and procedures.
4. The roll out of our new time and attendance and rostering technology in our homes and hospitals continues to go well and we hope it will enable our teams to work more flexibly.
5. 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.
6. Our people strategy, “Together, People Make Barchester” 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. We have made positive progress across a number of areas in an employee lifecycle and we are proud to have retained our 1 star Best Companies accreditation; the only healthcare provider recognised in this way.