Forestry Commission gender pay gap report: Report for the year 2018-2019
This report outlines the Forestry Commission's gender pay gap and bonus pay gap figures.
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You can download the report as a PDF above, or read a text version of the report below.
Gender Pay Gap Report
This gender pay gap report for the Forestry Commission covers the period 1 April 2018 – 31 March 2019. It publishes the mean and median gender pay gaps, the bonus pay gap 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 issues to address such as less women working in higher pay bands.
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 is committed to equality of opportunity for all and will continuously strive to reduce the gender pay gap.
Since the last report, it is important to note that the Forestry Commission has undertaken a major organisational restructure, whereby a large proportion (approximately one third) of the workforce transferred to Scottish Government. This has made comparisons with 2017 extremely difficult so they have not been included in this report.
FC Gender Mix
40% of the FC workforce is female
FC Gender Pay Gap
- Mean pay gap: 8.71%
- Median pay gap: 5.71%
The average (mean) hourly rate for males is 8.71% higher than females. The median gender pay gap is lower than the mean gender pay gap at 5.71%.This means that of all the male and female employees of the Forestry Commission, the middle male salary is 5.71% higher than the middle female salary.
Bonus Pay Gap
The Forestry Commission only operates a performance bonus for the senior staff group. There were only 3 bonus payments paid to 2 males and 1 Female. The resulting Gender Bonus Pay Gap was 66.25%.
Pay Quartiles
Proportion of men and women in each hourly pay quartile.
- All staff
Women: 40%, Men: 60%
This measure excludes staff not on full pay at 31 March 2019 (e.g. statutory maternity pay, long term sickness or unpaid career breaks)
- Lower quartile
Women: 47%, Men: 53%
- Lower middle quartile
Women: 32%, Men: 68%
- Upper middle quartile
Women: 37%, Men: 63%
- Upper quartile
Women: 33%, Men: 67%
The lower quartile of staff comprises 47% female staff and the upper quartile comprises 33%. This compares with the wider Forestry Commission population of 40% female (the Forestry Commission workforce is split 59.7% male and 40.3% female. These numbers cover all staff including those not on full pay at 31 March 2019 – for example, statutory maternity pay, long term sickness or unpaid career breaks). If there were a higher proportion of females in the upper quartiles the pay gap would reduce. The pay gap is largely as a result of the higher concentration of women in more junior grades.
Causes of the Gender Pay Gap at FC
Forestry work has historically attracted fewer female candidates than male candidates. This is particularly the case in forestry operational roles. This imbalance is improving and the proportion of female employees has increased over the past few years from 35% to 40%. 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.
Working to reduce the Gender Pay Gap
The Forestry Commission is committed to improving our gender pay gap and has a number of programmes underway looking to reduce it, these include:
- Offer 2020
Offer 2020 is a programme which is reviewing our offer to staff. This includes everything from pay and benefits through to staff wellbeing and development. Part of this programme is looking at operational roles and whether anything can be done to improve the pay scales. Any changes achieved in this area will support a further reduction in the gender pay gap.
- Women in Forestry Programme Board
At the Forestry Commission, we strongly believe in listening to staff and acting on what they say. We have run a number of women in forestry focus groups to understand what our staff would like us to focus on to make the workplace more inclusive. As a result of these focus groups, an FC wide ‘Women in Forestry’ programme board has been established. This programme is implementing recommendations from men and women across the organisation linked to how we widen the pool from which we recruit through to how we encourage greater flexibility in higher pay bands.
- FC Policy and Procedures
Through the application of our policies and procedures we are continuously striving to reduce the gender pay gap. For example, we have been considering the language used in job adverts across the board but particularly in senior roles. We want to widen the pool of who applies for senior roles. In Forest Research, there are science promotion procedures. We are ensuring that the panel is balanced and checks are made at each stage of the process to check for fairness (e.g. part time working/career breaks).