The RPS Pay Gap 2021

April 2021: RPS gender pay gap

Over the past three years, RPS have been measuring our gender pay gap and reporting on a voluntary basis in accordance with the same criteria used by larger organisations that are legally obliged to report this.

We began publishing our figures in April 2019, with data from the previous year. With our 2021 figures now being published, we can look for patterns over time to see how we’ve progressed, gain a fuller understanding of the factors behind our pay gap, and what actions are most likely to be effective in addressing this.

Our minimum aspiration is that our pay gap is below the national average, which itself is decreasing over time. We achieved this by at least two to three percentage points in our first two years of reporting, but in 2021 our median gender pay gap hasn’t met this target. Our current median pay gap is 17.2%, 2.5% higher than last year, and above the national median pay gap of 15.5%. We’re working hard to understand the reasons for this change, and what we can do to improve it.

We know that some of this fluctuation stems from the small number of men employed at RPS – 76 of 209 employees - so that even one male appointment at senior level could affect male median pay by one or two percent.

Women represent 47.2% of our upper pay quartile, and we’d like to see this move over 50% to more closely reflect our predominantly female workforce.

We’re happy that we’ve reduced the over-representation of women in the lowest pay quartile from 12.3% in 2018 to 7.2% in 2021. However, we’re not satisfied with our overall pay gap and are committed to improving it.

In our 2019 and 2020 pay reviews, we used external pay benchmarking to uplift salaries that were assessed as below a reasonable market range. Although this was initially a gender-neutral exercise it had a positive impact on the female/male pay ratios. This now looks to be levelling out, so we’ll need to look at other actions to ensure we can continue to address our gender pay gap.

Action to address the pay gap

We recognise that there are many complex factors that contribute to the gender pay gap, including external labour market factors that we can’t influence directly. We’re working on a range of actions to improve women’s pay position over time.

One thing we’re doing is using a gender decoding tool to check that the language we’re using in job adverts is gender-neutral and doesn’t discourage women from applying for senior roles or for roles in any areas of the organisation where they may be under-represented. This applies in the same way to more junior roles in the organisation where men are under-represented, so that we achieve a more even gender balance at all levels.

We’re also reviewing our recruitment processes and have started monitoring our recruitment outcomes by gender to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to be fair and inclusive, to eliminate any potential bias across all our recruitment and to encourage greater representation of women in more highly paid roles.

We’ll continue to use pay benchmarking to ensure we address any low pay issues or salary disparities, and we are looking at how we can develop our pay policy and approach to encourage and drive conversations about pay progression

We’ll be working on our more detailed action plans during this year with the involvement and support of our Inclusion and Diversity Group, the Employee Forum and colleagues across RPS.

Breakdown of RPS gender pay gap at 5 April 2021

The charts below show the breakdown of our pay gap and proportions of female/male representation at all levels within RPS.

To interpret the figures below, it’s important to remember that we are not dealing with large numbers of employees, so percentages can be misleading. We have 209 employees in total, 133 are female and 76 are male. One man represents 1.3% of our total male population, whereas one female represents 0.75% of our total female population.

All charts below should be looked at considering the percentage representation of each employee group in the whole organisation. We employ approximately 64% women and 36% men. Since the last report, we have seen a 1% increase in female employees and a 1% decrease in male employees.

If both groups reached the top salary levels in the same proportions, we could expect to see about six women and four men in our top ten posts.

April 2021: RPS ethnicity pay gap

Since 2018 RPS have been measuring our gender pay gap and reporting on a voluntary basis in accordance with the same criteria used by larger organisations that are legally obliged to report this. In 2020, we reported on our white/ethnic minority pay gap for the first time. 2021 is our second year of reporting our ethnicity pay gap.

At the same time, we have continued to measure the ethnic diversity of our employees at different levels in the organisation. While we employ people from many professional disciplines, we are the pharmacy leadership body, and it is only right that we compare ourselves to the profession we support.

Our findings are that the composition of our workforce mirrors the UK pharmacist workforce on gender but is under on Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation.

The median pay gap between our white and BAME employees is 10.7% at April 2021, compared to 11.7% in April 2020.

There is no simple comparison between the RPS White/BAME pay gap and a national pay gap as there are differences between racial groups. 

The RPS gap is below the 21.7% White/BAME pay gap in London, where most of our employees are based.

We used our first ethnicity pay gap report as a baseline to take action to reduce our gap, and we are pleased to see that these actions have resulted in a small improvement. We know that there is more work to do, and we continue to take action to reduce our pay gap and meet our target.

Action to address the pay gap

We have continued to monitor BAME pay and representation at all levels within RPS and put in place action plans to improve this. This action has included using pay benchmarking as part of our annual pay reviews and sharing our pay bandings and reward framework to increase transparency of our pay approach and pay progression. Over the next 12 months, we will be developing our recruitment approach further through diverse shortlists, developing our recruitment managers further and developing our pay policy to encourage more conversations about pay

We are continuing to measure our ethnicity, age and gender reporting categories in our employee survey, so we can check if the high levels of satisfaction and engagement our surveys display apply equally to all groups and take any required action accordingly.

We have developed an internal mentoring group which has aimed to encourage a diverse range of mentors, particularly people who are from BAME backgrounds (also including people who are LGBTQ+ or who have a disability). This mentoring group will be rolled out further in 2022, to help our senior leaders develop new ways of thinking, understand the challenges our colleagues face and help expand their personal networks.

We have reviewed and amended our recruitment processes to ensure that we’ve done everything we can to be fair and inclusive, to eliminate any potential bias across all our recruitment and particularly to improve representation of BAME employees at senior level within RPS. Over the next 12 months, this work will continue with specific actions planned on diverse shortlists and panels, salary range transparency and increasing the use of skills-based tasks in recruitment.

We’ll be working on our more detailed action plans in the course of this year with the involvement and support of our Inclusion and Diversity Group, the Employee Forum and colleagues across RPS.

April 2021: RPS disability pay gap

At RPS, we ask applicants and new employees to complete equality data, including if they have a disability. In 2020, we’ve also advertised all our vacancies on ‘find a job’ the disability job board.

1.4% of our employees have told us they have a disability, 93.8% have said that they don’t have a disability and 4.8% prefer not to say. We don’t have full information for job applicants, as not everyone completes this information when applying.

We said that we’d report our disability pay gap in 2021. Based on a small number of employees who have shared this information, our current disability pay gap is 5.4%. The UK pay gap has been estimated to be between 12.2% and 20% (ONS 2018, TUC research 2020).

We’ll continue to report on and monitor our disability pay gap. Over the next twelve months we will be taking other action to highlight disability issues, support employees with a disability and work on providing more opportunity for disabled people, in line with our Disability Confident Committed employer pledge.

Breakdown of RPS ethnicity pay gap at 5 April 2021

The charts below show the breakdown of our pay gap and proportions of BAME representation at all levels within RPS. We’ll add to this information over time as we make progress in addressing inequalities.

To interpret the figures below, it’s important to remember that we are not dealing with large numbers of employees, so percentages can be misleading. We have 209 employees in total, 201 with declared ethnicity. 57 employees have declared BAME ethnicities, so one person would count as 1.8% of that group.

All charts below should be looked at considering the percentage representation of each employee group in the organisation. With 73% white and 27% BAME employees, if both groups reached the top salary levels in the same proportions, we could expect to see about seven white and three BAME employees in our top ten posts.

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