Blackwell's Gender Pay Gap Statement

What is the Gender Pay Gap?

The gender pay gap is defined as the difference in median pay between men and women.

The gender pay gap is not about equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value and it is unlawful to pay people unequally because they are a man or a woman.

What is Blackwell's Gender Pay Gap?

The numbers below are calculated at the snapshot date of 5^th April 2019

Understanding the results

This data is calculated from 198 male and 206 female employees who qualified for inclusion in this data on the snapshot date of April 5th 2019. The bonus data is compiled from the 12 months prior to this date.

Blackwell's median gender pay gap remains low at 1.9%. This KPI is used by the Office of National Statistics as is less affected by extreme values and generally gives a good indication of the typical pay and inequalities experienced by women.

Blackwell's mean gender pay gap of 13.06% is higher and reveals that the highest earners are predominantly male. Our highest earners are within higher paid specialist roles particularly in the IT and Development teams and in the senior leadership teams.

The bonus data is calculated from bonuses paid over the year. Approximately 80% of employees were eligible for a company performance bonus in the year. This was paid as a % of salary which meant that highest paid earners were paid more. This data includes those who received long service awards.

Blackwell's Plan

We remain committed to reducing our gender pay gap.

Whilst we have equal pay throughout the organisation the gender pay gap in Blackwell's is caused by an under-representation of women at senior leadership levels and within our team of software engineers who attract higher salaries compared to our bookselling teams.

As a traditional family firm with integrity and respect at the heart of our values, Blackwell's want to be part of the cultural change that leads to greater equality and opportunity in the workplace.

Sharing the Gender Pay Gap Report with our employees is an important part of discussions with all employees about how we can have more equality and diversity in Blackwell's.

First and foremost though we want to recruit, develop and promote talent and experience – whatever the gender.

We support all of our employees, be they men or women to have a healthy balance in their work lives and personal lives. We believe that we will have better motivated and more effective employees if we enable our people to work flexibly at any life stage if that is the right thing for them. Encouraging the take up of sabbaticals for instance may enable women and men to take time out of their career to take care of elderly relatives, spend time with grandchildren or gain training or experience in a specific area whilst enabling Blackwell's to retain talent and highly motivated employees for the long term. This may not reduce our gap (if more women choose to take time out of the workplace) but our priority should be to do the right thing by our people even if that means a slower pathway to achieve gender parity in our statistics.

However, there is still much we can do to support women to gain the skills and confidence to progress into the most senior roles. We are doing this through:

• succession planning and proactively encouraging and developing talent
• the continuation of formal mentoring schemes – particularly focusing on women in the two middle quartiles
• Supporting part time working and flexible working in all parts of the business wherever roles allow

In addition we have

• changed the company bonus scheme in 2019 so that any future company wide bonuses are paid equally to all employees rather than as a % of salary
• updated and promoted our Flexible Working Policy
• reviewed the initial guidance from the Workplace and Gender Equality (WAGE) Research Programme that delivers guidance on evidence based actions that UK businesses can take to tackle their gender pay gap

In addition in Spring 2020 we plan to

• Enable families to redistribute caring responsibilities by launching and promoting an enhanced Shared Parental Leave Policy

Blackwell's face the same challenges as other businesses in regard to attracting women to technical roles in IT and in software development. However, we believe that our culture and continual improvements to flexible working policies and practices will ensure we are an attractive choice for all talented employees.

We want Blackwell's to celebrate diversity and ensure equal opportunity for all.