Acas gender pay gap report 2022

The figures show:

• 59% of our workforce are women – this is the same as in 2021
• 43% of our senior civil servants (SCS) are women – this is a large increase from 17% in 2021

The figures show:

• our 'mean' (average) hourly pay gap is 7.2%
• our 'median' hourly pay gap is 6.1%

In the financial year 2021 to 2022, overall headcount decreased from 1,058 to 1,028, a decrease of 2.8% (including a 3.1% decrease in pay-gap-eligible employees from 1,044 to 1,012).

Changes in the demographic of our workforce mean that we have seen some fluctuation in 2021 to 2022 gender pay gap figures. These show an improved mean pay gap of 7.2 %, in favour of men, down from 7.3% in 2020 to 2021, but an increase to our median pay gap of 6.1%, in favour of men, up from 1.1% in 2020 to 2021.

The majority of starters or leavers were in our lower grades (grades 9 and 10), and we recruited an increased proportion of women at the lower end of the scale. Although this data does not differentiate between London and non-London based staff at these grades, there is a tendency for starters to earn less than leavers and for men to earn more at grade 9 than women. This may partly explain why our median pay gap has increased.  We have also seen an increase of women within SCS grades having a minimal effect on the mean.

Note that the 2021 data did not include vouchers, so this is why there has been such a steep change in the proportion of people receiving bonuses.

The figures show:

• 57% of women were awarded a bonus
• 60% of men were awarded a bonus
• the mean bonus pay gap is 19.4%
• the median bonus pay gap is 9.9%

Note that if we remove SCS from the dataset, the mean pay gap stays the same, but the mean bonus gap reduces to 9.5%.

The table below shows the proportion of women and men in each pay quartile for Acas. It shows that there is a higher proportion of women in all quartiles except the upper pay quartile.  

Proportion of men and women in each quartile

Acas senior leadership team are committed to fair pay irrespective of gender.

We will continue to build on actions and initiatives aimed at eradicating the gender pay gap, including:

• adopting a flexibility by default principle by moving to a hybrid working model, allowing many colleagues to work from home or other suitable locations more frequently in the future
• support for women returning to work through shared parental leave, job sharing, compressed hours, part-time, remote working (including working from home) and term-time only opportunities – plus, encouraging men to also take advantage of flexible working arrangements
• continuing to monitor pay to identify pay differences and take targeted action where appropriate, within Civil Service pay controls
• taking a more proactive approach towards monitoring our bonus pay in the future, this includes reviewing our recognition programme and making sure full Management Information (MI) data is collected to ensure fairness of recognition awards across all grades and gender
• continuing our approach to anonymise the job application process to reduce the potential for bias and making sure that all panel members have undergone recruitment training which includes ensuring diversity and success profiles
• aiming to have a 'diverse by default' approach towards recruitment, for example, by having recruitment panels which are diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity
• helping women progress in their careers through a clear conversation approach towards performance management, which encourages line managers to have an open ongoing dialogue with staff on career development and progression

Mean (average) gender pay gap

• The mean hourly rate is the average hourly wage across the entire organisation.
• The mean gender pay gap measures the difference between the women's mean hourly wage and the men’s mean hourly wage.

Median gender pay gap

• The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle.
• The median gender pay gap is the difference between the women’s median hourly wage (the middle paid woman) and the men’s median hourly wage (the middle paid man).