Agenda item

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager introduced the report, explaining that it was a statutory requirement for the council to produce. He said that it was a positive report, with the mean gender pay gap down 3% to 13% and the median gender pay gap down to 9% from 19%.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that the reasons for these decreases was due to more men in lower quartiles and a slight increase in the number of women in higher pay quartiles than last year. He said that a gender imbalance remained in lower pay quartiles – with administrative and customer service roles dominating.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that attracting men into lower paid roles remained difficult with the outsourcing (such as waste and grounds maintenance) skewing the gender balance.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that equality, diversity, and inclusion training was mandatory across the workforce, with blind CV’s being implemented alongside diversity in interview panels to reduce bias in recruitment. He said that the gender representation across pay quartiles was monitored to ensure balance.

The Chair thanked the Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager for his report.

Councillor Buckmaster said that blind CV’s had been spoken about by the Committee approximately 2 years ago, and asked why they had not been implemented already.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that the old Applicant Tracking System (ATS) had promised a blind function but could not deliver. He said the new ATS was modern with new coding, which officers were keen to try.

Councillor Swainston welcomed the report and said that it could be seen that the council was travelling in the right direction. She said that it would be helpful for the report to have explanations of terminology set out at the outset, and for diagrams (as seen at page 40) to include quantities as well as percentages.

Councillor Willcocks also sought clarification regarding the statistics within the report.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that such numbers could be included in the next report. He said that within local authorities pay grades and scales existed, meaning that new starters were generally paid at the bottom of a pay grade (except for exceptional candidates who had verifiable skills and or experience). He said that this stopped bias.

Councillor Connelly agreed with Councillor Swainston’s request for numbers to be included as well as percentages within the report. She asked if the statistics could cause a problem that was not there – with a danger that women could be kept out of administrative and part time jobs. 

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that this was the reason for comment to be included within the report, and that there would never be a perfect 50% balance. He said that the world was changing and that it was important to ensure that all genders could progress fairly and equitably.

Councillor Swainston referred to the Hay job evaluation method and asked if this process ironed out any skewed statistics.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that the Hay method looked at all elements of a rolea. He said that the Strategic Human Resources/Organisational Development Lead would provide a further detailed explanation of the Hay method, which would be circulated to Members.

Councillor Carter said that it would be interesting to see comparable statics for other local authorities.

The Human Resources and Organisational Development Service Manager said that the council did have some benchmarking, but as some services were contracted out or were a shared service he would need to research further.

It was moved by Councillor Willcocks and seconded by Councillor Swainston, that the recommendations, as detailed, be approved. After being put to the meeting and a vote taken, this motion was declared CARRIED.

RESOLVED – that (A) the Gender Pay Gap Report 202 be noted; and

(B) the action plan 25/26 be considered and further suggestions added where appropriate.