Gender Pay Gap Report

Gender Pay Gap Report April 2018

Every company with 250+ employees in the private and public sectors are required by law to calculate and analyse their gender pay and gender bonus gap in April of every year. The information generated is then publicised annually on the Government website as well as on company websites.

Our Approach to Gender Equality

As an Employment Business/ Agency, TQR Plymouth Ltd promote equality and diversity across all areas of the business. We aim to ensure fair selection, treatment and promotion of our direct staff, as well as partner with our clients to ensure unbiased selection and equal opportunities for all new applicants and temporary workers. We have various procedures in place to ensure inclusivity and parity across the business, some of which are as follows:

• Leadership Accountability – Our Senior Team accept full responsibility and ownership for promoting and communicating gender equality and diversity within our workplace. By developing and applying our company policies, we promote the equal treatment of new applicants, our direct staff and temporary workers regardless of gender.

• Partnership Approach – We are proud to partner with ethical businesses who promote gender equality. We take time to understand our clients needs and skill requirements as well as provide open and honest feedback to ensure the fair selection and equal treatment of new applicants and our temporary workers.

• Benchmark – We aim to monitor TQR’s performance and procedures alongside other organisations in similar sectors to ensure best practice across our business and encourage change in relation to gender equality.

• Review Performance – TQR hold our people accountable for promoting and applying fair and inclusive working practices. TQR actively monitor individual performance and regularly review our organisational practices to ensure gender equality is paramount.
• Employee Development – We identify and invest in training opportunities to educate employees, colleagues and clients to understand and promote the management of equality and diversity in the workplace.

Gender Pay Gap Statistics – Snapshot 5 April 2018

The following figures are expressed relative to men’s earnings.

• Our female hourly rate is 3.1% lower (mean) and 3.4% lower (median);

• Our highest salary quartile has 81.9% men and 18.1% women;

• Our upper middle salary quartile has 62.0% men and 38.0% women;

• Our lower middle salary quartile has 62.0% men and 38.0% women;

• Our lower salary quartile has 70.4% men and 29.6% women;

• 15.9% of women received bonus and 38.1% of men received bonus;

• *Our female bonus pay is 1504% higher (mean) and 361.13% higher (median).

*Please see note below outlining explanation for distorted figures in this case.

On 5th April 2018, TQR recruited 285 workers split across temporary and permanent positions, 269 of those workers were temporary production staff (94% of the workforce) spread over 28 client organisations. TQR also employed 16 (6% of the workforce) direct TQR employees on permanent contracts in varying positions ranging from Recruitment Specialists through to Senior Managers. Our wide range of hourly rates and bonuses (including commission for our Recruiters) for temporary staff and direct permanent employees are consolidated and presented in this Gender Pay Gap Report.

Within this Gender Pay Gap Report the UK Government require us to report on and analyse all of our roles at all levels, both temporary workers and permanent employees. On the basis of this, our data extends beyond simply comparing hourly rates and bonuses of workers performing exactly the same roles and as a result has produced some distortions in bonus figures.

As an Employment Business/ Agency there are varying hourly pay rates for temporary workers primarily dictated by the clients we partner with. As a predominantly technical and industrial Employment Business/ Agency, many of our temporary workers are production staff (low to medium skilled), however, this can extend to more highly skilled senior specialists working on a consultancy basis. Our pay rates are also influenced by geographical variances across Devon and Cornwall and potential skill shortages in those areas which arguably are unrelated to gender. We work closely with our clients to ensure transparent pay and reward structures, non-discriminatory recruitment practices and opportunities for men and women to succeed at all levels, however, it cannot be ignored that manufacturing sectors appear to still predominantly attract men. In our report, 71% of our temporary production workers are male, alongside 29% being female. Over time we are seeing this variable change as more girls are encouraged through education to enter into engineering and technical types roles. TQR and our clients are very keen to reduce the male/ female gender distribution within manufacturing.

With regard to our direct permanent staff, we see a distribution of 62.5% woman (in some senior roles and some part time) and 37.5% men (some part time) at TQR. Men and women conducting the same role are paid equally, which TQR regularly review. *TQR provide a very healthy commission structure for high performing Recruitment Consultants and so increasingly see our highest commission earners being female. This would explain the large deviation in bonus figures for men and women, as the high female commission earners evidently distort the figures for the whole of our workforce (which include our temps) in our report.

Final Summary

Our Gender Pay Gap statistics demonstrate the diversity of our workforce as we are required to compare men and women irrespective of their differing roles. Gender pay and bonus pay gaps are seen differently to ‘equal pay’ and following this analysis, at TQR we believe we do not have an issue with Equal Pay.

At TQR we are committed to understanding and analysing the reasons for the gender pay gap and where appropriate determine further actions to help us to promote equality and diversity in our workplace and across our client base. In addition to our ‘Approach to Gender Equality’ (see above), we aim to focus on the following:

1. Improve Gender Monitoring – Work with our Clients and employees to look at how we can record and review our data to reduce our Gender Pay Gap which may include:
   1. Recruitment and Selection, including Promotion;
   2. Pay and Reward processes;
   3. Flexible Working Requests and Part Time Working;
   4. Exit Interviews;
   5. Policy and Procedure Review that can affect equality, discrimination and inclusion.
2. Continue to develop Senior Staff and employees to ensure fair, non-discriminatory and consistent processes.

I can confirm that the information and figures detailed in this report are accurate and have been calculated in accordance with the Gender Pay Gap reporting requirements in the Government guidance.

David Freeman (Managing Director, TQR Plymouth Ltd)