Transparency data

Home Office's gender pay gap report 2017

Published 18 December 2017

Background

Earlier this year, 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 2018 and then annually, including 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. 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 Home Office supports the fair treatment and reward of all staff irrespective of gender.

The 2017 to 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Strategy supports the Civil Service ambition to become the most inclusive employer in the UK by 2020. The Home Office is focused on demonstrating notable progress towards this, not underestimating the level of challenge in making this its reality over the next 3 years. We continue on our journey to become a place where everyone feels valued, able to bring their whole selves to work and, importantly, reflect the communities we serve.

This report fulfils the department’s reporting requirements, analyses the figures in more detail and sets out what we are doing to close the gender pay gap in the organisation.

Analysis

Context

At 31 March 2017, Home Office employed 27,887 full time equivalent staff in delegated grades (those below Senior Civil Servant (SCS)) and 219 SCS staff. 52 percent of all staff were women.

The Home Office annually reviews pay for delegated grades, focussing on what steps might be taken to reduce identified disparities as part of its pay policy. SCS pay policy is owned by Cabinet Office. Arm’s Length Bodies of the Home Office and National Crime Agency (NCA) will report separately. The gender pay gap analysis provided here is based on the methodology set out in the Equality Act (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

Male	48
Female	52

Hourly Pay

The mean gender pay gap (the difference between men’s and women’s average hourly pay) is 10.1 percent and the median gender pay gap is 15.1 percent.

Whilst the Home Office employs a relatively even mix of men and women, there are different concentrations in different parts of the business. Home Office is a diverse organisation, employing people across the grades in a variety of operational, policy and corporate service roles, and across a range of professions including digital and technology, scientists, statisticians, communications and finance. We offer flexibility in ways of working, with the majority of roles being made available on both a full or part time basis, across the UK and, with advances in technology, we are increasing the amount of roles that are available to people who need to work at least some of their time from home.

The make-up of the workforce is reflected in our pay gap and in particular, is affected by our large-scale operations:

• Border Force and Immigration Enforcement generally attract more male applicants - these organisations operate 24/7 with higher numbers of male employees benefiting from shift allowances.
• HM Passport Office (HMPO) is able to offer more flexible employment opportunities and generally attracts more female applicants.

As HMPO roles are at a different (lower) level than border control roles, and attract less shift allowances, this results in both the median and mean pay for females being lower.

Hourly pay quartiles

The hourly pay quartiles data show the proportion of men and women that are in each pay quartile, when we arrange staff in order of hourly pay rate.

The lower and second quartile have higher proportions of female staff than male staff, due largely to the number of female staff working in HMPO.

The third and upper quartiles have higher proportions of male staff, and this difference in distribution of staff across the pay quartiles also impacts the gender pay gap.

Percentage of males and females in each pay quartile

Quartile	Male	Female
Upper quartile	58.1	41.9
Third quartile	53.3	46.7
Second quartile	40	60
Lower quartile	39.4	60.6

Bonus Pay

The Home Office offers in-year reward and recognition, as well as end of year performance awards to staff receiving a top performance rating.

The mean gender bonus gap (difference between men and women) is 16.6 percent and the median gender bonus gap is 13.0 percent. Overall 25.5 percent of women and 28.0 percent of men received a bonus payment.

The bonuses women received were, on average, lower. This is, in part, because end of year bonuses are pro-rated for part-time working and over 80 percent of part-time staff at Home Office are female.

Proportion of employees receiving a bonus

-	Bonus	No bonus	total
Males	28	72
Females	25.5	74.5

Gender bonus pay gap

Median bonus gap	13 percent
Mean bonus gap	16.6 percent

Actions

Home Office has already done a lot of work in this area, and during 2017 won a number of internal and external diversity awards for some of our outstanding contributions and innovative initiatives delivered through our employees. We are also one of only 5 Public Sector organisations in the 2017 Times Top 50 Employers for Women, which considers both internal processes and external activity that promotes gender equality, diversity and inclusion and creates opportunities for women in a wider context.

However, Home Office is committed to further improving representation rates of women at more senior positions, underpinned by a robust Diversity and Inclusion strategy. We continue to focus on delivering training and development that engenders inclusive leadership behaviours and practices in managers at all levels through:

• mandating training to all staff to mitigate “unconscious bias” and embedding “inclusivity by instinct”
• providing learning and development opportunities in a range of formats, for staff at all grades, which is varied to ensure there is flexibility to complete learning according to working pattern, hours, location and individual learning style
• developing “career pathways” enabling all staff to see the opportunities to develop their careers – making opportunities visible together with clarity of the skills, knowledge and experience required to advance careers in particular professions
• commissioning an in-house delivery of an externally led Leadership Summit programme constructed around the example of 26 successful women – delivered to senior managers to assist the mission of making the whole organisation inclusive by default, and to women at all levels to reach their potential
• creating a structured “Returnships” programme, designed to attract and support women into fulfilling Home Office roles on their return from career breaks

Home Office continue to monitor trends in earnings by gender and take action as permitted within the parameters set by the Treasury’s pay guidance to further reduce any variances.

Calculations

Our calculations followed the legislative requirements, and we confirm the data reported is accurate.

All staff who were deemed to be full paid relevant employees were included, however contractors were unavailable for this report.

Any agency workers who provide services for Home Office are included in the publications for the relevant agency.

We had limited data on the distribution of recognition vouchers and this data has therefore been excluded, however we aim to include this data for future calculations. In year cash bonuses paid via our payroll have been included.