The RPS Pay Gap 2023
- RPS Pay Gaps introduction
- April 2023: RPS gender pay gap
- April 2023: RPS ethnicity pay gap
1. RPS Pay Gaps introduction
A pay gap is the difference between the average rates of pay of employees in different groups across an organisation. It is used as a simple indicator of equality and fair career progression, allowing for comparisons between different organisations.
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 report our gender and ethnicity pay gaps voluntarily as part of our commitment to equality and inclusion.
On the last reporting date in April 2023, female employees at RPS were paid 21% less on average than male employees. Employees from non-white ethnic minorities were paid about 10% less on average than white employees.
These figures don’t mean that we have unfair pay disparities between people doing the same job, but reflect levels of seniority in the organisation and employment patterns in our junior and mid-level roles. For example, we employ women and men in approximately equal proportions in our most senior roles, but women form a far higher proportion of employees in our junior and mid-level roles. The same is true to a lesser extent for employees from an ethnic minority.
Over the past few years, we have analysed the reasons for our pay gaps and carried out annual pay benchmarking to ensure that we are paying a reasonable market rate for all our job roles, looking at both external and internal comparisons. We have also introduced other initiatives such as gender-neutral advertising, and blind recruitment.
Our ethnicity pay gap has fluctuated, but overall shows a small improvement since we began reporting in 2020. However, our gender pay gap has grown year-on-year since we began reporting in 2019, and the actions we’ve taken so far have not been effective in addressing this.
We recognise that there are many complex factors that contribute to our pay gaps, including external labour market factors that we can’t influence directly. We have gone into more detail about this and the actions that we are taking in the separate reports for our gender and ethnicity pay gaps below.
2. April 2023: RPS gender pay gap
Our 2023 report is based on 147 female and 63 male employees paid in the month of April.
In April 2023, our median gender pay gap was 21.0%. This was higher than our pay gap for the previous year (17.4%) and above the national median of 14.3% (ONS estimate, November 2023).
The main driver for our pay gaps is the composition of our workforce. We employ women and men in roughly equal proportions at senior levels in the organisation, and our Executive team is 50% female. However, women significantly outnumber men in our more junior roles, and these proportions have continued to rise over the past few years.
In April 2023, women represented 70% of our total workforce, held 46% of posts in the upper pay quartile and 78% of posts in the lower pay quartiles (the highest and lowest paid quarters of our workforce). Female representation in the upper quartile shows no change since the previous year, while representation in the lower quartile has increased from 67% in 2022.
There are several reasons why we attract more women to many of our job roles. We offer excellent opportunities for flexible working, including at senior level, and were recently accredited by Flexa as one of their top 100 employers for 2023 to 2024.
In 2023, over 60% of applications for all advertised roles were from women, rising to almost 80% for some roles. These numbers also reflect our main workforce professions of pharmacy and publishing. Over the past few years, we have seen a gradual increase in the proportion of women employed at RPS, rising from 64% of our workforce in 2021 to 70% in 2023.
This pattern is reversed in our Technology department, where over two-thirds of employees are male. Over the past two years, market forces and changes to our skills mix have driven up salary levels in this area, which in turn affects our gender pay gap.
Action to address the pay gap
Over the past three years, male and female employees have benefitted equally from in-year 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.
Our focus for reducing our gender pay gap is to increase the proportion of female employees in our upper pay quartile to at least 50%.
We strongly support internal career progression for women and promote diverse application pools and shortlists for director and senior management vacancies. In 2023, we recruited five women and three men to senior management roles (Head of Department and above), with similar numbers promoted to these levels internally.
In 2024, we are providing inclusive recruitment training for managers to ensure that our hiring managers have the skills to support objective recruitment decisions and to help reduce any potential bias that may exist in our recruitment processes.
Breakdown of RPS gender pay gap for April 2023
The charts below show the breakdown of our pay gap and proportions of female/male representation at all levels within RPS.
The figures should be looked at considering the percentage representation of each employee group in the whole organisation. We employ approximately 70% women and 30% men. If pay levels were evenly distributed between the two groups, we would expect to see these percentages approximately reflected at each quartile level.
3. April 2023: RPS ethnicity pay gap
RPS reports our ethnicity pay gap on a voluntary basis, in the same way we do our gender pay gap. We also measure the ethnic diversity of our employees at different levels in the organisation. Our 2023 report is based on 143 White and 60 ethnic minority employees on the snapshot date of 5 April 2023.
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.
Our April 2023 report is based on 143 White employees, 60 employees of other ethnicities and two unstated. These numbers represent 70.4% and 29.6% of our workforce respectively, with no significant change since 2022.
The median pay gap between our white and ethnic minority employees was 10.1% in April 2023, down from 14.8% in the previous year.
There is no simple comparison between the RPS White/ethnic minority pay gap and a national pay gap as there are differences between ethnic groups. Based on a 5-point categorisation1, pay gaps range from Mixed or Multiple Ethnic Groups, who earn 7.2% more than White workers, to Black or Black British who earn 5.7% less. (ONS, November 2023)
In April 2023, 29.6% of our employees were from non-white ethnic minorities. Ethnic minority employees held about 15.4% of posts in the upper pay quartile and 28% of posts in the lower pay quartile, both figures improved from 12% and 39% respectively in April 2022.
1 White, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British, Mixed or Multiple Ethnic Groups, Other Ethnic Groups
Action to address the ethnicity pay gap
Over the past three years ethnic minority and white employees have benefitted equally in proportion to their numbers from annual pay benchmarking uplifts. Between 2022 and 2023, ethnic minority employees also benefitted equally from in-year promotions and pay changes, an improvement on previous years.
To help improve pay gaps and career progression for racially disadvantaged groups, we are promoting diverse application pools and shortlists for director and senior management vacancies. In 2023, four of the twelve appointees to senior management roles were from an ethnic minority (two external recruitment, two internal promotions).
Our focus for reducing our ethnicity pay gap is to increase the proportion of ethnic minority employees in our most senior roles to better reflect the overall ethnicity proportions in the UK population. In April 2023, 15.4% of our upper quartile employees were from an ethnic minority, up from 12.2% in 2022, showing that we have moved closer to our current target of 18%.
In 2024, we are also providing inclusive recruitment training for managers to ensure that our hiring managers have the skills to support objective recruitment decisions and to help reduce any potential bias that may exist in our recruitment processes.
Breakdown of RPS ethnicity pay gap for April 2023
The charts below should be looked at considering the percentage representation of each employee group in the organisation. With 70.4% white and 29.6% ethnic minority employees in the organisation, if pay levels were evenly distributed between groups, we would expect to see these percentages approximately reflected at each quartile level.
