Blackwell's Gender Pay Gap Statement
Blackwell's UK Limited
Blackwell's Gender Pay Gap: Reporting year 2021 to 2022
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 5th April 2021
| Calculation | % | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Average gender pay gap as a mean average | 18.32 |
| 2 | Average gender pay gap as a median average | 12.96 |
| 3 | Average bonus gender pay gap as a mean average | -42.06 |
| 4 | Average bonus gender pay gap as a median average | -37.72 |
| 5 | Proportion of males receiving a bonus payment | 6.28 |
| Proportion of females receiving a bonus payment | 2.74 | |
| Calculation – Proportion in each quartile bands | Males % | Females % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Upper | 52 | 48 |
| Upper middle | 52 | 48 | |
| Lower middle | 50 | 50 | |
| Lower | 57 | 43 | |
Understanding the results
The data at the snapshot date of April 2021 remains heavily skewed by the number of employees furloughed. Employees who were placed on furlough were selected due to their role being impacted by the pandemic. Under the Gender Pay Gap reporting rules employees receiving less than 100% of their pay are excluded from three of the six gender pay gap calculations.
99 out of 495 employees were paid full pay on the snapshot date and therefore relevant to this calculation.
The 99 employees comprised mainly of those in the digital and development teams, essential support functions such as IT, finance and payroll, corporate sales teams and colleagues in shops that supported in online functions during the time of shop closures.
The mean gap at 18.3% is reduced on the 19.3% prior year and the median of 12.9% is also reduced from 27% the prior year. In 2019 (pre-pandemic) our mean gap was 13.1% and our median pay gap was 1.9%.
Due to restructuring of senior management within the year due to the pandemic the average male salary fell by 10% and the average female salary fell by 8% for the staff not furloughed relevant to this calculation.
The bonus data is calculated from bonuses paid over the year up to April 2021. The bonuses paid out largely related to long service awards in the year. Although more male employees qualified for this, female employees reached milestones in service that qualified for higher value awards. Therefore, the gap is in favour of women in this reporting year.
Blackwell's Plan
We remain committed to continually 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 and IT teams 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, whatever their identity to have a healthy balance in their work lives and personal lives. We believe that we will have better engaged and more effective employees if we enable our people to work flexibly at any life stage if that is the right thing for them.
Since the snapshot date Blackwell's have reviewed and improved our family policies, increasing company pay for those on maternity leave, paternity leave and adoption leave as well as offering a generous Shared Parental Leave scheme to enable families to redistribute caring responsibilities.
Blackwell's have introduced hybrid working, enabling our office-based colleagues to continue to work from home. This flexible working will enable colleagues to better manage childcare and other family commitments and enable retention of our talented workforce.
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
- mentoring and coaching - 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
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.