The RPS Pay Gap 2022
- Gender pay gap
- Ethnicity pay gap
- Disability pay gap
- Pay gap infographic
April 2022: RPS gender pay gap
Organisations with 250 or more employees have a legal obligation to report their gender pay gap every year. As RPS has fewer employees (closer to 200), we don’t have to report our pay gap. We do this on a voluntary basis as part our commitment to equality and inclusion; however, this means that small shifts in our employee base can have significant effects on our statistics and so we have tried to provide a more extensive explanation of the trends below.
Our minimum aspiration is that our pay gaps are below the national average. In April 2022, our median gender pay gap hasn’t met this target. Our current median pay gap is 17.4%, higher than the national median of 14.9% (ONS estimate, October 2022).
We’ve worked hard to understand the reasons for our pay gap and what we can do to improve it. 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.
The composition of our workforce contributes to our pay gap. We employ women and men in roughly equal proportions at senior levels in the organisation. However, women significantly outnumber men in our more junior roles.
We receive about twice as many applications from women than from men for our vacant roles, reflecting our main workforce professions of pharmacy and publishing. We also offer excellent opportunities for flexible working, including at senior level, which are likely to attract and retain more women.
In April 2022, 66% of our employees were women. Women held 54% of roles in the two upper pay quartiles and 77% of roles in the two lower pay quartiles. We know that balanced representation, particularly in the top quartile, is a common factor in organisations with a lower pay gap and are focussing on this when recruiting to senior roles.
Action to address the pay gap
Based on our ongoing analysis of pay progression, we can say that over the past two years women and men have benefitted equally from pay increases and promotions, in proportion to their numbers in the organisation. Men have done slightly better than women from pay benchmarking adjustments, which reflect market rates. The pattern of new appointments and leavers is likely to be the strongest factor in maintaining the imbalance in our pay levels. For example, in 2021 men were more likely than women to leave junior or mid-level roles, often being replaced by women.
We’re continuing to address this pattern by supporting internal career progression, encouraging female job applicants for senior level roles, and focussing on balanced shortlists for director and senior management vacancies. In Autumn 2022 we used our new ATS system to introduce blind recruitment for new vacancies, helping reduce any unconscious bias that may exist in our recruitment processes.
In November 2022, we commissioned an external diversity consultant to advise on any other actions we could be taking to improve our gender pay gap. Some recommendations made are already in place at RPS – for example, mentoring scheme, talent management programme and flexible working at senior level.
We’ll continue to build on our efforts in this area, engaging with our Inclusion and Diversity group, Employee Forum, and colleagues across RPS to support this.
Breakdown of RPS gender pay gap at 5 April 2022
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. These figures are based on 201 employees in total, 132 are female and 69 are male. One man represents 1.4% of our total male population, whereas one female represents 0.76% 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 66% women and 34% men. Since the last report we have seen a 2% increase in female employees and a 2% decrease in male employees.
If both groups reached the top salary levels in the same proportions, we could expect to see about seven women and three men in our top ten posts. In April 2022, we had three women and seven men in the top ten.
Gender Pay Gap 2018-2022
% difference for pay quartiles shows the difference from the expected percentage of employees in that quartile, based on 34% male and 66% female employees in the whole RPS workforce on the snapshot date of 5 April 2022.
April 2022: RPS ethnicity pay gap
RPS reports our ethnicity pay gap on a voluntary basis, in the same way we do our gender pay gap. 2022 is our third year of reporting this.
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 a pharmacy leadership body, and it is right that we compare ourselves to the profession we support.
The composition of our workforce approximately mirrors the UK pharmacist workforce on gender but is lower in relation to non-white ethnic minority representation. In the 2021 census, 81.7% of the England and Wales population identified as white, with the remaining 18.3% from non-white ethnic minorities. The percentages for RPS are 70% white and 30% non-white ethnic minorities, up from 27% in 2021. In numbers, we have 140 White employees, 60 ethnic minority employees and 1 unstated.
The median pay gap between our white and ethnic minority employees is 14.8% at April 2022, compared with 10.7% at April 2021, and to 11.7% in April 2020.
There is no simple comparison between the RPS White/ethnic minority pay gap and a national pay gap as there are differences between racial groups. The RPS ethnicity pay gap is below the 23.8% White/ethnic minority pay gap in London, where most of our employees are based, but higher than the UK pay gap of 2.3% (ONS, October 2020).
In April 2022, 30% of our employees were from non-white ethnic minorities (increased from 27% in 2021). Ethnic minority employees held 19% of roles in the two upper pay quartiles and 41% of roles in the two lower pay quartiles. We know that balanced representation, particularly in the top quartile, is a common factor in organisations with a lower pay gap and are focussing on this when recruiting to senior roles.
Our minimum aspiration for reducing our ethnicity pay gap is that the proportions of white and ethnic minority employees in our most senior roles mirror the UK population. Based on the 2021 census figures, we have reviewed our previous target of 13%. In April 2022, 12% of upper quartile employees were from an ethnic minority. Going forward, we will be working to a target of 18%.
Action to address the pay gap
Based on our ongoing analysis of pay progression, we can say that over the past two years ethnic minority and white employees benefitted in proportion to their numbers from annual pay benchmarking uplifts.
Ethnic minority employees did less well than white employees from in-year promotions and pay increases. This is likely to be mainly due to the proportion of newer employees in this group, 30% of whom had under one year’s service on the reporting date, with 37% under two years’ service.
We have reviewed and amended our recruitment processes to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to be fair and inclusive, to help improve representation of ethnic minority employees at senior level within RPS.
In Autumn 2022 we used our new ATS system to introduce blind recruitment for new vacancies, helping reduce any unconscious bias that may exist in our recruitment processes.
We’ll continue to build on our efforts to reduce our pay gap, engaging with our Inclusion and Diversity group, Employee Forum, and colleagues across RPS to support this.
Breakdown of RPS ethnicity pay gap at 5 April 2020
The charts below show the breakdown of our pay gap and proportions of ethnic minority 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 201 employees in total, 200 with declared ethnicity. 60 employees are from a non-white ethnic minority, so one person would count as 1.7% of that group.
All charts below should be looked at considering the percentage representation of each employee group in the organisation. With 70% white and 30% ethnic minority employees, if both groups reached the top salary levels in the same proportions, we could expect to see about seven white and three ethnic minority employees in our top ten posts. In April 2022, we had nine white employees and one ethnic minority employee in our top ten.
Ethnicity Pay Gap 2020-2022
*Mean pay rate is the average of all salaries added together and divided by the total number of employees of that gender. Median pay rate is the middle salary in a range of individual salaries. Government measures use the median.
% difference for pay quartiles shows the difference from the expected percentage of employees in that quartile, based on 70% white and 30% ethnic minority employees in the whole RPS workforce on the snapshot date of 5 April 2022.
April 2022: RPS disability pay gap
At RPS, 2.5% of our employees have told us they have a disability or health limiting condition. 91.5% say they don’t have a disability. The remainder haven’t shared this information, with some telling us they prefer not to disclose it. We don’t have full information for job applicants as not everyone completes this information when applying.
Based on the small number of employees who have told us they have a disability, our current median pay gap is 18.6% and our mean pay gap is 6.5%. The UK median pay gap has been estimated to be between 13.8% and 17.2% (ONS April 2022, TUC November 2022).
As numbers remain small, we’re not taking any specific action to address our disability pay gap. Our current focus is on providing an inclusive and supportive working environment for our employees, encouraging job applications from people with a disability and educating our employees and managers to support this as part of our commitment to being a Disability Confident Employer.
Since 2020 we’ve advertised all our vacancies on the ‘find a job’ disability job board. In 2022 we introduced our new ATS system, which facilitated self-declaration and interview adjustment requests. In the first 12 weeks of using the system, 4.5% of applicants declared a disability, and 3.2% requested adjustments to the selection process.
We’ll continue to report on and monitor our disability pay gap as part of our inclusivity action programme.
RPS Pay Gap Infographic
