In April 2022, as we share our updated gender pay gap data, we continue to acknowledge that our gap is not satisfactory. However, as we said following International Women’s day – we don’t shy away from this; we are aware and transparent about the gap, our reasons for having one, and what we’re doing about it.
Again this year, we will be sharing more detail on our gender diversity and related actions, as well as voluntarily sharing our ethnicity pay gap information for the second consecutive year. This will all be included in our full pay gap report – to follow later in 2022. You can see the full ethnicity and gender pay gap report issued in 2021 (with 2020 data) here.
In the meantime, we’ve set out the key facts in relation to our 2021 data below:
- Our median gender pay gap is 21.3%, which has increased by approximately 1% since 2020 (when it was 20.2%).
- We have a gender pay gap because the significant percentage of women we employ in our first three pay quartiles is not yet replicated in our top pay quartile. We are, however, very proud that 49% of our workforce is female.
- We have more than halved the gender pay gap in our upper pay quartile since 2018, from 15.7% to 7.8%. The other three pay quartiles all meet the Equalities and Human Rights Commission guidance of under 5%.
- We are pleased that we now have a Board of directors that is 36% female and an Executive Committee that is 44% female, with two of our three divisional Chief Executive Officers being women, as well as our Chief Growth Officer and Chief General Counsel & Company Secretary. We do, however, continue to have a significant representation challenge in our upper quartile with only 29% women.
To drive further improvements in our senior female representation, we have already:
- Extended female representation on upper-quartile shortlists to a 60% target
- Analysed our employee survey results by gender and gender identity, and are working with our gender-focused Employee Network Group (ENG) to develop an action plan based on feedback
- Supported female development through mentoring and high-potential schemes
- Increased our options for flexible work in order to make more roles accessible to women with caring responsibilities
- Piloted a market-leading alternative for inclusive recruitment – using skill-based & behavioural assessment followed by structured interviews.
- Started mapping our Career Path Framework, linking to externally validated market pay ranges, so we are able to identify any gender disparity against market pay
- Launched a new set of pay principles to increase transparency and consistency in pay increases and promotions.
- Substantially improved our parental leave policies.
However, despite this list, we are clear that our progress is not fast enough. Therefore, in 2022 we will also be:
1. Expanding our mutual mentoring programme to trial a ‘gender-focused’ programme. The mutual mentoring programme that we have already created (focused on race and ethnicity) has had significant success, demonstrated through exceptional feedback scores. We are therefore developing a new mutual mentoring programme in 2022 which will focus on gender, using the same principles and techniques. The goal is to build a more inclusive workplace for all genders, while also creating relationships that lead to career opportunities for our female mentors.
2. Piloting a ‘RISE’ inclusive senior leadership programme for women. We are currently in the pilot phase with RISE, our inclusive leadership programme focused on creating opportunities for ethnically diverse colleagues to move into middle-tier leadership roles. We are now working to expand this programme by developing a senior leader-focused programme for women.
3. Building diversity targets into bonus-linked objectives. For the first time in 2022, manager objectives include a diversity and inclusion target, with gender representation built in where appropriate.
4. Launching a diversity scorecard. To aid tracking and reporting on progress, we are currently building a new diversity scorecard, which includes relevant metrics on gender, and will provide live data to the business.
5. Launching a Capita-wide diversity hub. We have significant work being undertaken in Capita on diversity and inclusion, much of which is not yet consistently visible in all parts of the business. We are therefore building a new diversity hub which aims to share information, best practice and opportunities, and to highlight diverse role models across Capita.
6. Launching a new ‘Capita Leadership Council’ (similar to a shadow Board) which aims to bring more diversity to senior leadership conversations, and provide opportunities for diverse colleagues. We expect the Council to have at least 50% women.
7. Launching a ‘parental partner’ scheme, run by our employee-led Family Network, to better support and mentor expecting and new parents throughout their pregnancy/adoption process and on their return to work.
We hope these actions will continue to drive positive progress in our pay gap and representation challenges, and we remain committed to working towards a minimum of 50% of female representation in all pay quartiles. We will provide further updates on the actions listed above in our full 2022 pay gap report.
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About Capita
Capita is a consulting, transformation and digital services business. Every day our 55,000 colleagues help millions of people, by delivering innovative solutions to transform and simplify the connections between government and citizens, businesses and customers. We partner with our clients and provide the insight and cutting-edge technologies that give time back, allowing them to focus on what they do best, and making people’s lives easier and simpler. We operate across three divisions – Capita Public Service, Capita Experience and Capita Portfolio – in the UK, Europe, India and South Africa. Further information can be found at: https://www.capita.com
