Transparency data

Companies House gender pay gap report 2021

Published 18 March 2022

1. Introduction

Companies House is fully committed to ensuring the fair treatment and reward of all staff irrespective of gender, as well as any other diversity characteristic such as age, ethnicity, religion and/or belief, sexual orientation, and disability status.

The promotion of equality and inclusivity is at the heart of everything we do, and we’re proud of the progress that we’ve made and continue to make.

Our commitment to supporting women to flourish in the workplace is evidenced by:

• more women than men holding the most senior positions within our organisation
• a reinvigorated women’s network
• a development programme for women
• specific focus on recruiting and retaining women in our digital area

Our vision set out in our equality, diversity, and inclusion strategy, is to be a leading Civil Service department and model employer where our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion supports our brilliant people to deliver brilliant services. Through our strategy, we will continue to change and improve, building on the already strong foundations we’ve built so far.

In the area of gender specifically, we’ve already done a significant amount of work and our future plans are set out in section 5 - Other measures to close the gender pay gap.

2. Definition

The gender pay gap is an equality measure that shows the difference in average earnings between women and men. It does not show the difference in pay for comparable jobs.

It is different to equal pay which deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs, or work of equal value.

In line with public sector regulations, the data in this report is based on a snapshot date of 31 March 2021. For bonuses, the period used was 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, which was the 12 months preceding the snapshot date.

3. Gender pay gap data

The gender pay gap for Companies House for 2021 is:

Mean pay gap of 12.3%

(A reduction on the 2020 figure of 13.6%)

Median pay gap of 20.4%

(The same as our 2020 figure)

Mean is the average in the data set, and median is the middle number in the data set.

Our commitment to gender equality comes from the top of the organisation. Four of our seven most senior employees (Senior Civil Servants) are women including the Chief Executive. These, and other women in senior roles in Companies House, provide visible role models for other women in the organisation, which supplements many of the initiatives in place to improve our position.

The following table shows the number of male and female employees in Companies House in each quartile.

Quartile	Female %	Male %
Lower quartile	64.0%	36.0%
Lower middle quartile	65.1%	34.9%
Upper middle quartile	50.0%	50.0%
Upper quartile	40.4%	59.6%

The pay gap is largely driven by an uneven gender split by grade especially the significant number of women employed in the Band B (Administrative Officer) grade. This results in a higher proportion of female employees in the lower and lower middle quartile (although this has decreased slightly since 2020).

We’ve previously undertaken research into why there is a lack of progression to higher roles from women in our Band B grade. Feedback included a perception that working part time limited opportunities for promotion, a lack of confidence or a perceived unlikelihood of success, preventing them applying for promotion and the potential loss of government paid benefits following promotion, acting as a deterrent to applying.

As a result of these findings, we’ve put a series of measures in place focusing on demonstrating that working part time (or other flexible working patterns) is not a barrier to progressing through the organisation. This is covered in section 5 - Networks.

The opportunity for the majority of our colleagues to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic has helped some achieve a better work life balance. As we plan our exit from COVID-19 and shift to becoming a truly hybrid working organisation, we’ll ensure our plans are developed using the feedback and positive impact this has had on our colleagues, as well as any lessons we’ve learned as part of this process.

4. Bonus awards

Companies House operates reward and recognition schemes which prior to April 2021 included a corporate efficiency award which has since been removed. These awards all operate irrespective of gender.

From April 2021 the corporate efficiency award was amalgamated into base pay, so will not contribute to future bonus awards.

The proportion of male and female employees receiving one of the above performance awards in the 12 months ending 31 March 2021 is:

Female	93.10%
Male	89.10%

The bonus awards pay gap is:

Mean bonus pay gap of 18.3%

Median bonus pay gap of 17.1%

Our bonus figures also improved compared to last year with our mean figure of 18.3% reduced from the 19.7% and the median figure of 17.1% lower than the 2020 reported figure of 18.8%.

In the current financial year, we’ve changed the way we operate our main reward and recognition scheme. From April 2021 awards have been paid at a flat rate replacing the old scheme which was based on a percentage of base pay. We’ve shifted the focus from the level of reward received to focus more on the recognition element, and in doing so taking the opportunity to equalise payments between men and women, which will have a positive effect on our bonus pay gap figures.

We continue to work across our networks to build a positive and inclusive working environment where we reward and recognise our colleagues’ achievements in a fair and transparent way, with updated guidance introduced to assist colleagues.

5. Other measures to close the gender pay gap

Over the last few years, we’ve built a strong reputation as a family friendly organisation. We’ve also continued to build on actions and initiatives to reduce the gender pay gap. These include:

• support for women returning following a career break
• flexible working patterns to help with childcare
• home working
• shared parental leave
• subsidised play schemes

We already offer a broad range of support for working mothers through our career break, flexible working, and shared parental leave practices - but our post pandemic move to hybrid working will provide us with the opportunity to improve and strengthen that offer further.

We’re reviewing our policies and people practices ensuring they encourage the right actions and behaviours in our people and are suitable for our future ways of working. In our review, we’re building in opportunities for our policies to be developed collaboratively with our relevant networks and impact assessed to ensure people are not adversely affected by any of the content.

We’re committed to continuous improvement of our recruitment processes to reduce the potential for unconscious bias. As part of our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workforce, the process is anonymous. This means application sifters are unaware of a candidate’s personal details, which protects against bias and all panels are mixed sex.

We expect the move to hybrid working and, in some circumstances home working, will encourage applications from a wider and more diverse pool of talent - and our external public target for diversity reflects that.

5.1 Promoting women in science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM)

We’re continually focusing on recruiting and retaining women in Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT). Our head of innovation and outreach is actively involved with local universities encouraging women into the DDaT profession.

We’re also looking into the possibility of partnering with Code First Girls alongside other government departments.

We continue to be members of the Government Digital Careers Alliance. This is a cross government group that looks to share best practice and work together to improve diversity particularly in women, within STEM, working with groups like Technocamps who look at encouraging girls into STEM.

We continue to work on employer branding, including social media content that features women and a diverse group of employees in all roles, and a Digital Open Day showcasing females in key roles both within Companies House and the DDaT profession.

5.2 Networks

As an organisation Companies House now has 23 active people led networks and support groups, each delivering effective change and outcomes in relation to equality, diversity, and inclusion. Each network has a senior sponsor who champions their cause at a senior level.

These networks play a significant role in supporting the delivery of our strategic goal of:

Our culture enables our brilliant people to flourish and drives high performance.

These were instrumental in supporting the health and wellbeing of so many that have been impacted by the new working arrangements as a result of COVID-19.

Our networks have also worked tirelessly to provide sound opportunities for our staff to flourish, for delivering improved performance and user experiences, and also personal development opportunities. This has created an environment where differences are celebrated, new ideas embraced, staff feel supported to do their best work and have a sense of belonging.

This year the women’s network has built on the successes of previous years. It continues to grow in strength and has held numerous workshops to discuss and tackle difficult issues and surface where improvement can be made. Sessions have been held that focused on ‘imposter syndrome’ and ‘personal brand’ to share insecurities and develop awareness and resilience in those areas.

The working family network has also grown over the last year with more than 60 additional working mothers (and many fathers too) joining the network. This has given an insight to some of the issues working families face, and within these sessions the network has been able to discuss concerns around flexible working, working from home, and work-life balance.

There has been an increased level of collaboration between our networks over the last year through our ‘This is us’ campaign - promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion in our culture and policies at Companies House.

6. Summary

Companies House is fully committed to ensuring the fair treatment and reward of all staff irrespective of gender or any other protected characteristic.

This report highlights our progress made to date. We intend to continue this progress and put in place new measures that will allow all our staff to feel supported and to flourish within the organisation.

While these measures will be comprehensive, it is worth noting that the gender pay gap in Companies House, just like it is in a wider societal context, is a complex issue that will take time to address.

However, while there are no quick and easy solutions that will allow us to quickly address the gender pay gap in Companies House, this will not deter our ambition to close our gap and to be more inclusive, more diverse and an organisation that people want to work for.