Targeted action to reduce and close the gender pay gap

UKSA has a comprehensive plan to be a more inclusive employer.

Aligned to the core principles of UKSA’s Strategy to be radical, ambitious, inclusive and sustainable, we have a detailed Inclusion & Diversity Strategy to ensure the workforce reflects the communities we serve, and our colleagues have opportunities to develop, progress and adapt their careers at all stages of their lives.

We will continue to actively engage with our employee networks and workforce to further explore the reasons for our pay and bonus gaps.

Our commitments, both delivered, underway and in development, include:

Interventions to improve the gender pay and bonus gap:

• Continuation of the Women into Leadership development interventions to further equip female colleagues to progress in their careers, improving our representation of women at senior levels.
• All Directors General, the Director for Operations and Director for Finance Planning and Performance have biannual Hold to Account sessions where their performance against key inclusion and diversity metrics are scrutinised by the National Statistician.
• The embedding of our Inclusion, Culture, and Wellbeing dashboards to equip senior leaders with detailed information as to the impact of their workplace practices on under-represented communities, including recognition awards which directly impact bonus gaps.

Interventions focused on other diversity aspects, which will intersect with gender, include:

• Continuation of the Diversity into Leadership development interventions to further equip colleagues with a disability and colleagues from ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities) to progress, improving our representation at senior levels.
• Requirements are in place for diverse interview panels to support greater diversity at recruitment.
• Continued use of virtual recruitment as our default method which is believed to reduce disadvantage for colleagues with a disability.
• The development and launch of an interactive inclusion experience that aims to sensitise colleagues to the experiences of ethnic minority colleagues in the workplace, designed to raise awareness of racial biases and behaviour and enhance cultural intelligence.
• Our community of diversity networks and sponsors, ensuring consistency of approach, clear aims and action plans are in place.
• Introduction of caring responsibility questions on our Human Resources People Portal, lending to a greater understanding of the makeup of our workforce.
• Retaining the Level 3 Disability Confident Leader accreditation.
• All colleagues having unlimited access to the Peppy menopause app.
• The launch of revised Workplace Adjustment Guidance and the Workplace Adjustments hub, enabling colleagues to access the contextually appropriate resources they require to overcome barriers within the workplace.
• A refresh to our recognition scheme was launched in April 2022, with an aim to increase its inclusivity, by changing the types of awards available and the value.
• Building a Recognition dashboard so we can increase awareness of our senior leaders of any trends and target interventions to ensure we are continually improving our bonus pay gap across all diversity characteristics.

To enable us to publish pay and bonus gap information for disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation, we will continue to engage and share information to encourage higher rates of self-declaration and this will inform our action plans to achieve a truly representative workforce.