Forestry Commission gender pay gap report: Report for the year 2017-2018
This report outlines the Forestry Commission's gender pay gap and bonus pay gap figures.
Documents
Details
You can download the report as a PDF above, or read a text version of the report below.
Forestry Commission gender pay gap report: Report for the year 2017-2018
Background
In 2017, the Government introduced world-leading legislation that made it statutory for organisations with 250 or more employees to report annually on their gender pay gap. Government departments are covered by the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 which came into force on 31 March 2017. These regulations underpin the Public Sector Equality Duty and require the relevant organisations to publish their gender pay gap data by 30 March annually. This includes the mean and median gender pay gaps; the mean and median gender bonus gaps; the proportion of men and women who received bonuses; and the proportions of male and female employees in each pay quartile.
The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce. If a workforce has a particularly high gender pay gap, this can indicate there may be a number of issues to deal with, and the individual calculations may help to identify what those issues are.
The gender pay gap is different to equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. It is unlawful to pay people unequally because they are a man or a woman.
The Forestry Commission (FC) supports the fair treatment and reward of all staff irrespective of gender. This report fulfils the Forestry Commission’s reporting requirements, analyses the figures in more detail and sets out what we have done to reduce the gender pay gap in the organisation.
FC gender mix (as at 31 March 2018)
- 36% of FC workforce are women
- 18% of FC Senior Civil Servants are women
The figures have increased from last year when the gender mix was 35% of the FC workforce were women and 17% of FC Senior Civil Servants were women.
FC gender pay gap (as at 31 March 2018)
- Mean pay gap: 6.3%
- Median pay gap: 1.4%
The average (mean) hourly rate for males is 6.3% higher than females. This has increased slightly since last year (6.2%).
The median gender pay gap is lower than the mean gender pay gap at 1.4%. This means that of the whole male and female workforce in the FC, the middle male salary is 1.4% higher than the middle female salary. This is the same percentage as last year.
FC bonus pay gap (as at 31 March 2018)
- Mean pay gap:37.5%
- Median pay gap: 37.5%
Proportion of men receiving bonus: 0.1%
Proportion of women receiving bonus: 0.1%
FC only operates a performance bonus for the senior staff group, which constitutes only 11 employees in the FC. From 1 April 2017 until 31 March 2018 there were three recipients of a bonus across FC. This represents 0.1% of men and 0.1% of women across FC. The pay gaps between bonuses for men and women using both the mean and median calculations have increased from last year when we had no bonus pay gap. However, with so few members of staff eligible for bonuses within the FC, a single award to a single individual can make a significant difference to the percentage pay gaps.
Pay quartiles (as at 31 March 2018)
-
All staff
Women: 36%, Men: 64%
This measure excludes staff not on full pay at 31 March 2018, such as statutory maternity pay, long term sickness or unpaid career breaks.
-
Lower quartile
Women: 47%, Men: 53%
-
Lower middle quartile
Women: 27%, Men: 73%
-
Upper middle quartile
Women: 35%, Men: 65%
-
Upper quartile
Women: 33%, Men: 67%
Proportion of men and women in each hourly pay quartile
The lower quartile of staff comprises 47% female staff and the upper quartile comprises 33%. This compares with the wider FC population of 36% females (this FC workforce is split 64% male and 36% female. These numbers cover all staff including those not on full pay at 31 March 2018, such as statutory maternity pay, long term sickness or unpaid career breaks).
This can also be seen in the following table which shows the distribution of female and male staff by grade. The arrow denotes increasing seniority of grades from junior roles to senior roles. There is a greater proportion of female staff in the most junior grades, PB6B and PB7 and a higher proportion of males in more senior roles, PB4 and higher. Civil Service equivalent grades are shown for comparison.
| FC Grade | Civil Service Grade | Number female staff (% female staff in this grade) | Number male staff (% male staff in this grade) | % female |
| PB7 & PB6B | AA/AO | 307 (34%) | 323 (20%) | 49% |
| PB6A | 121 (14%) | 285 (18%) | 30% | |
| PB5 Ops & PB6A | 100 (11%) | 422 (26%) | 19% | |
| PB5 | EO | 135 (15%) | 120 (7%) | 53% |
| PB4 & PB3 | HEO / SEO | 186 (21%) | 339 (21%) | 35% |
| PB2 & PB1 | Grade 6/7 | 38 (4%) | 90 (6%) | 30% |
| SCS | SCS | 2 (0%) | 9 (1%) | 18% |
| Total (including contractors) | 893 | 1605 | 36% |
This analysis indicates that the FC’s pay gap is largely as a result of the higher concentration of women in more junior grades.
However, our 2017 Equal Pay Audit identified that there were no significant equal pay issues (greater than 5%) across the pay bands (the equal pay gaps measure the pay gap between the average men and women’s salaries in the same pay bands. Staff in the same pay bands are considered to be doing work of equal value. The gender pay gap considers the average male and females earnings across the Forestry Commission as a whole so is also influenced by the mix of genders between different pay bands).
Pay gaps varied from -0.3% to 3.3% with more than 50% of pay scales having a gap of less than 1%.
Causes of the gender pay gap at FC
Forestry work has historically attracted fewer female candidates than male candidates. Although this imbalance has recently improved, within the FC the majority of employees (64%) are male. Furthermore, male employees within the FC have, at most grades, more service than their female colleagues. Since 2011, when time-served progression through the grades was stopped, employees no longer receive annual increments to move them up through their pay scale. As a result, employees with greater service are more likely to be at the top of their pay scale than those with shorter service.
In 2005 the gender pay gap at the Forestry Commission was 21%. Significant work has been undertaken over recent years to reduce this to the current position of 6.3%. This work has included shortening pay scales, removing incidences of overlapping pay scales, addressing issues around promotions and replacing pay spines with continuous pay scales.
Furthermore, greater focus on diversity and inclusion has led to the proportion of female employees increasing to 36%.
Working to reduce the gender pay gap
The FC is committed to further improving our gender pay gap and are looking at a number of initiatives to reduce the gender pay gap, these include:
Pay
- When possible, reduce the gap between the top and bottom of the pay scales with particular focus on operational pay bands
- Take targeted action as part of the annual pay increase to ensure pay differences in grades are reduced where possible
- Conduct a gender pay gap analysis at FC and pay band level at every annual pay award
Gender mix
- Continue to carry out equality monitoring during post-filling and recruitment as well as reviewing language in recruitment literature to ensure it is gender-neutral
- Flexible working policies applicable to all roles
- Unconscious bias training for all staff involved in recruitment
- Pro-actively engaging female role models to positively promote career choices.
Actions taken during 2017-18 to reduce the gender pay gap
During the year the following actions have been taken:
- Reporting Officers have undertaken unconscious bias training
- Publicising of flexible working options, career progression paths and female role models within the organisation
- Training for HR teams on making recruitment processes and job adverts more accessible and appealing to a wider talent pool
- Steps have been taken to encourage more females to apply for senior leadership opportunities, including specific communications, Q&As and positive action statements in job adverts, etc
- Adopted Family Friendly Working Scotland logo on all job adverts in Scotland
- Offered Scottish Government’s ‘First Mentor’ programme to staff in Scotland which gives younger women the opportunity to be mentored and supported by senior female staff in the organisation
- Partnering with ‘Developing Our Young Workforce’ in local education centres to proactively encourage young females to consider forestry as a career