Corporate report

SLC Gender Pay Gap Report 2023

Published 28 March 2024

1. What is the legislation?

In 2017, the government introduced legislation that made it statutory for organisations with 250 or more employees to report annually on their gender pay gap. Government departments are also 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 relevant organisations to publish their gender pay gap by 30 March annually. This includes the:

• proportions of male and female employees in each pay quartile
• mean and median gender pay gaps
• proportion of men and women who received bonuses
• mean and median gender bonus gaps

2. What does the gender pay gap mean?

The gender pay gap is a high-level overview of pay and bonuses within an organisation and shows the difference in the average pay between females and males in the workplace (within the snapshot date of 31 March 2023). This report is crucial for SLC to understand how our organization is performing in relation to gender equality. We also want to effectively utilise the information in the report to show our commitment to achieving gender equality and reducing our pay gap.

Please note, a gender pay gap is different to any issues of equal pay (the legal requirement to pay men and women the same for equal work).

We will provide information on the following areas in this report:

• Percentage of females and males in the organisation
• Percentage of females and males in each hourly pay quarter
• Mean (Average) Gender Pay Gap for hourly pay
• Median (mid-point) Gender Pay Gap for hourly pay
• Percentage of females and males receiving bonus pay
• Mean (Average) Gender Pay Gap for bonus pay
• Median (mid-point) Gender Pay Gap for bonus pay

3. Staff included in the gender pay gap data

This report sets out Student Loans Company’s gender pay gap based on the snapshot of data taken of 31 March 2023. The data does not include agency workers, contractors, board members, or joiners after 20 March 2023 as they are not included in the payroll. There are also a set range of exclusions, as per the government guidelines, which we have adhered to.

4. Gender profile of SLC

SLC’s gender profile as of 31 March 2023 was 54.0% of the workforce were female and 46.0% of the workforce were male. This is comparable to the 2022 figures of 54.2% female and 45.8% male. 

This is also consistent when compared with other similar public sector organisations, based on the civil service employment by department which was an average of 54.6% female and 45.4% male as of 31 March 2023.

	% Female	% Male
SLC March 2023	54%	46%
SLC March 2022	54.2%	45.8%

5. Hourly Pay by Quarter

The following details the proportion of females and males in each of the four hourly pay quarters. Pay is mainly represented by salary plus allowances minus any salary sacrifice deductions.

The four quarter pay bands are created by dividing the total number of full-pay relevant employees into four equal parts from highest paid (upper hourly pay quarter) to lowest paid (lower hourly pay quarter).

From highest paid to lowest paid, the following table details the percentage of females in each pay quarter over the last two years and the percentage change:

	Women 2023	Men 2023	Women 2022	Men 2022	Change for women between 2022 and 2023
Upper hourly pay quarter (highest paid) – employees earning £17.63 per hour or more	43.7%	56.3%	43.3%	56.7%	+0.4
Upper middle hourly pay quarter – employees earning £11.95 per hour or more	52.2%	47.8%	56%	44%	-3.8
Lower middle hourly pay quarter – employees earning £10.62 per hour or more.	53.8%	46.2%	55.5%	44.5%	-1.7
Lower hourly pay quarter (lowest paid) – employees earning £7.52 per hour or more	59.9%	40.1%	56%	44%	+3.9

As of 31 March 2023, for full-pay relevant colleagues, females occupy 43.7% of the highest paid jobs. Although the number of females in the ‘Upper hourly pay quarter’ has slightly increased by 0.4 percentage points, the majority of employees in the ‘Upper’ pay quarters are male (56.3%).

Conversely most employees in the ‘Lower’ pay quarter are female (59.9%) with an increase of 3.9 percentage points on last year’s figure (56%). However, while the majority gender split in all quarters except the ‘Upper pay quarter’ is females, there has been an increase in males placed in the ‘Lower middle’ and ‘Upper Middle’ pay quarters’ which will contribute to the reduction in the ‘median’ pay gap overall.

Given the overall organisation split of 54.0% female and 46.0% male, there is a higher percentage female in the lower pay quarter and higher percentage spilt of males in the ‘upper pay quarter’. These shifts impact the overall outcome of the mean (average) gender pay gap.

6. Gender Pay Gap

The mean (average) female hourly rate is 12.7% lower than the mean male hourly rate. A slight increase of 0.6 percentage points from 12.1% in 2022.

The median (mid-point) female hourly rate is 4.1% lower than the median male hourly rate. This has decreased by 3.5 percentage points from 7.6% in 2022.

The following table outlines the Gender Pay Gap figures for 2022 and 2023:

	2023 Pay Gap	2022 Pay Gap	Change (percentage points) between 2022 and 2023
Mean	12.7%	12.1%	+0.6
Median	4.1%	7.6%	-3.5

As the mean pay gap is calculated incorporating all the lowest and highest rates of pay, it therefore reflects the higher proportion of females working in lower paid roles and males working in higher paid roles as highlighted in section 6 of this report.

As we can see the median pay gap is considerably lower. This is because it is calculated finding the mid-point of all colleagues’ rates of hourly pay and discards any outliers in relation to lowest and highest rates of pay.

We have seen good progress in the reduction of our median pay gap by 3.5 percentage points. We will continue to take action to reduce our mean gender pay gap.

7. Bonus Pay Gap

Bonus data includes all performance-related and non-consolidated payments made in the financial year 2022-23. They include individual end of year performance-related payments; recognition payments; incentivisation payments; long service awards; and SLC-wide performance-related payments.

	2023 Bonus Pay Gap	2022 Bonus Pay Gap	Change (percentage points) between 2022 and 2023
Mean	1.7%	12.6%	-10.9
Median	0%	0%	0

The proportion of females receiving a bonus is 90.2% versus 92.6% of males, more males have received a payment by a difference of 2.4 percentage points.

The average female bonus was £955.69 compared to the male average of £972.30. The difference is £16.61. The mean (average) female bonus pay is 1.7% lower than the mean male bonus pay.

It should be noted that bonus payments are pro-rated for part-time employees. Of the 1,651 females that received a bonus 366 were part time workers. Of the 1,451 male colleagues, 68 were part time workers (22.2% Female to 4.7% Male part time workers in receipt of bonus payments).

In 2022 the difference was £93 (12.6% gap), giving a significant decrease of 10.9 percentage points.

The median was the same for both male and females at £850, meaning female bonus pay is equal to the median male bonus pay.

8. What are we doing to close the gender pay gap?

While we report only a small increase in the mean gender pay gap within the organisation, we are aware that we still have much work to do. The reduction in the median pay gap is a positive result for SLC.

We will continue to focus on addressing this issue as a priority for 2023-24 and beyond. We plan to conduct a mid-year review to assess our progress.

We will continue to monitor our Gender Pay Gap over the coming year, undertaking the actions outlined in our action plan and implementing our newly launched 2023-2026 EDI Strategy which underpins SLC’s commitment to gender equality. We have highlighted obtaining gender parity in Grades 15 and above where men currently represent the majority and actively focus on reducing our gender pay gap.

Our key activity over the last 12 months has focused on the following areas:

8.1 Recruitment

To achieve our aim of having a more diverse workforce we are utilising a wider range of recruitment platforms including Indeed, Facebook, LinkedIn, Civil Service Careers and S1Jobs. In addition, we have initiated the following new campaigns on Total Jobs:

•             Unlocking potential: discover your new role at SLC

•             Unlocking Technology: Discovering your potential with SLC careers 

•             Unlocking opportunities: Leadership and management roles at SLC 

The purpose of these campaigns is to attract colleagues with protected characteristics with a gender focus on women since data analysis shows that although most of our workforce is female women are underrepresented in grades 15 and above. 

We are confident that this campaign will support an increase in women in leadership positions and in technology roles, which are key areas that contribute to our overall mean gender pay gap.

We are exploring options to improve our equality monitoring methods to provide improved data on our recruitment and internal processes to ensure we can better identify barriers in our processes, this will include identifying at which point women, drop out of our recruitment and development processes.

We have developed new job adverts which make candidates aware of our commitment to flexible working by clearly detailing our hybrid working policy and highlighting our flexible working opportunities. We have introduced part-time school hour contracts within our Operations Directorate to attract more females to the workplace and provide part-time leadership roles. Our intent being to attract women who we know are more likely to need flexible working arrangements.

We ensure a reliable and valid selection process, including education on the effects of unconscious bias on managers and colleagues involved in the recruitment process. This includes a ‘licensed to hire’ programme that provides hiring managers with the knowledge to understand both unconscious bias and their responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010. We also consider gender representation across panel members for interviews.

We have undertaken post recruitment audits to improve selection, for example by surveying successful candidates around their experience of the application and interviewing process. We are exploring options to audit unsuccessful candidates in the future. All colleagues who apply for internal roles are provided with meaningful feedback, ensuring they understand the decision made and which steps they can take to improve their chances in the future.

We will utilise SLC’s newly formed Women’s Development Network to support the uptake and promotion of our graduate and apprenticeship programmes and inform any potential barriers within our recruitment processes.

There is continued focus on our Emerging Talent programme; building apprenticeship, intern, and graduate programmes to enable better career paths for those starting their working lives.

Building on the success of our previous returners to work campaigns, we will seek to identify and deliver more women returners and to align with our focus on multi-generational teams.

We will continue to focus on initiatives to increase recruitment of women into technical and senior leadership roles. Further details on our STEM initiatives are outlined in section 8.8.

8.2   Performance Development

The focus for performance development has been strengthening the quality assurance aspects of the Workday system. We have analysed the effectiveness of objectives including the SMART element and the volume each colleague has, with an additional lens on the quality of the commentary supporting colleague development.

This enhances fairness, consistency, and transparency in how performance and development is managed for all SLC colleagues as well as supporting even better decision-making regarding performance-related payments to reduce bias.

Development is underway to further enhance our performance development system for all colleagues.

8.3 Pay and Recognition

From February 2022, SLC implemented a new pay and grading framework to provide a fairer, more transparent, and effective pay and grading framework.

Certain technical roles in SLC were also aligned with the Government’s Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) framework. This framework has allowed us to uplift the salaries of a small number of roles in our Technology Group Directorate and provide an additional allowance for some. However, this aspect of our pay and grading reform has exacerbated existing gender pay gaps within this area of the organisation.

Throughout 2023, SLC have been working on a new pay case. The pay case includes plans to make pay fairer and more sustainable in the future. It is also aimed at ensuring that SLC pay, for our lower grades, is above the ever-increasing National Living Wage. (this may change depending on the status of the pay case).

While compiling our pay case we completed an equality impact assessment (EIA) to ensure we fully understood the implications on the women employed within SLC. Our findings were that women would be positively impacted.

We will continue to consider how our new pay and grading framework can help to reduce our gender pay gap overall and look for additional specific interventions within the Technology function.

8.4 Flexible Working

We recognise the importance of providing flexible working for all colleagues but know that women in particular benefit from flexible working practices. As part of the launch of our new Flexible Working and Hybrid working policies, all colleagues who can work from home will have the opportunity to adopt flexible working, balancing business needs and colleagues’ personal circumstances.

Our commitment to facilitating flexible ways of working will have a positive impact on workforce flexibility for women and support working parents and carers as we continue to build on positive strides made in this area.

We updated our Flexible Working Policy in June 2023 to incorporate generous flexible working benefits based on colleague feedback and insights. This included the right to request flexible working from day one, access to the use of flexi-time, multiple flexible working requests in a 12-month period and additional flexible working models.

Following analysis of our Gender profiles, we know that we need to increase female representation in our more senior grades, which is why we have now updated the policy to apply to all colleagues and allow flexibility across the organisation, regardless of grade.

We also implemented a new Hybrid Working Policy that supports all colleagues to work remotely, with up to 3 days at home and 2 days in the office.

During the review of our Flexible and Hybrid working policies we conducted an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure Women wouldn’t be negatively impacted by the proposed changes. This showed that the updated policies would positively impact the women employed by SLC.

We advertise our Flexible Working options in all job adverts to ensure we are attracting the best talent to SLC and bringing us in line with the wider Civil Service.

Part-time roles are advertised clearly in recruitment adverts providing increased flexibility for applicants, to assist in attracting those who may have caring or other responsibilities outside of the workplace.

8.5 Engagement

In the last report we highlighted the importance of establishing a Women’s Network gain further insight and better understand the lived experiences women face in SLC.

A new SLC Colleague Network Framework has now been approved and promoted throughout the organisation to support our Colleague Networks.

Following promotion of The Framework there has been excellent engagement from colleagues and a new Women’s Development Network (incorporating a specific focus on STEM) has now been established.

This network will enable the organisation to be more informed on any real or perceived barriers women face in relation to work life balance, career progression and personal development and which we hope supports insights to support the reduction of our Gender Pay Gap.

8.6 Career Progression and Development

Career Coaching has been introduced as an enduring development offering which is delivered monthly across the organisation. This provides colleagues the opportunity to meet with a coach to explore career aspirations and thus take ownership of their own professional development by then accessing on demand learning via Workday and Civil Service Learning. Leap of Faith was also launched as a development tool to enable colleagues to spend an hour, two hours, or half a day exploring what it’s like to work in another department or directorate, gaining insight into a particular role or skill, and perhaps consider if their own skills and capabilities might fit for a potential move in future. Both learning opportunities support our existing and future female leaders and individual contributors at all levels to build a rewarding career at SLC.

Next year, we are planning targeted development on EDI to further deepen and strengthen our Senior Leadership and Executive Leadership skills.  This will increase knowledge in how to effectively lead and support colleagues, ensuring they thrive at SLC where we are committed to celebrating and recognising differences in others as strengths.

8.7 Diversity in STEM Roles

We are continuing to focus on attracting more females to the Technology Group. In the 2023-24 financial year 10% of our STEM Apprenticeship roles were filled by women and our Graduate STEM roles were 31% female and 69% male. The reduction in women taking part in our programmes this year is largely due to budget constraints on departments funding apprenticeships and not having the opportunity to undertake any external intakes into STEM programmes. We have therefore had to rely on internal availability for STEM programmes and the female talent pool is much smaller than males. This has therefore impacted on the overall number of women accessing programmes this year.

We are aiming to design a new process through the Emerging Talent project that promotes wider opportunities to drive more applications.

We have implemented a STEM woman working group, which has been involved in careers fairs and school visits. SLC has also been involved with various programmes including Hello World in England, Career Ready England and Scotland  and sits on the Skills Development Scotland working group ‘Women into Tech’. The Career Ready programme has 10 Mentors from our Technology group participating and 50% of these are female.

Getting more women into tech is not just about attraction for relevant posts, we know we need to encourage more women to consider a STEM-related career, therefore early intervention is required. One of the main aims of our school’s partnership programme is to support education and socialisation of many different careers stories and discuss requirements for future skills to influence choices for more young people.

We have carefully considered the recruitment methods for our Emerging Talent programme through the completion of an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure we are encouraging uptake from women whilst being fair and consistent.

This includes ensuring we have equal gender representation at interviews and flexibility and inclusiveness in recruitment processes. We have designed a 360° Assessment Centre process which is based on meta-skills, aptitude, and openness to learn, not just current ability. This has proven to be a key strength in allowing our Emerging Talent programme to support our Women in STEM agenda.

We have joined the ‘Women into Tech’ steering group set up by Skills Development Scotland and University partnerships. This involves female employees conducting information and ‘meet the expert’ sessions.

We have prioritised partnering with schools to encourage and support young women who are interested in STEM careers by promoting tech opportunities in SLC. This will create a feeder pipeline for our Graduate Apprenticeship Programme. We have participated in several school visits and career fayres throughout the year including the Glasgow STEM Women Graduate Careers Event in Oct 2023 to promote tech opportunities within SLC.

Since April 2023 the Technology Group have received 36 Flexible working requests and 20 of these have been from women. These requests cover a variety of flexible working options including homeworking, compressed hours, and sliding working hours. TG continues to positively support flexible working requests which allow our colleagues a better work life balance, improve health and wellbeing and enable those with caring responsibilities to undertake both roles effectively.

9. Gender Pay Gap Action Plan

We will continue to monitor progress against our Gender Pay Gap Action Plan which outlines key areas of focus in relation to ‘Data’, ‘Recruitment’, ‘Retention’ (focus on ‘Pay and Recognition’ and Performance Related Pay), ‘Career Development’ (focus on ‘Performance Development ‘and ‘Diversity in STEM Roles’) and cultivating an ‘Inclusive Culture’ through effective leadership, role modelling and inclusive working practices that remove bias and barriers to progression.

Key areas of focus for future activity are outlined below:

Data

• Continue to track progress conducting further analysis of our GPG every six months. Following additional analysis this year, further develop insights for Gender Pay Gap outliers in relation to grade and directorate outliers.
• Obtain further insight/analysis of job families/directorates that have negative Gender Pay Gap in the organisation to share best practice.
• Collect further data on applicants by gender and attrition rates of females falling out of the recruitment process.
• Obtain further insights in relation to starting salary/ negotiation and exit interviews.

Recruitment

• Continue targeted focus on attracting females for senior leadership and technology roles through Total Jobs initiative and utilise the new Women’s Development Network to promote vacancies and encourage promotion opportunities.
• Implement gender specific recruitment targets to increase diversity in shortlisting and interviewing for Grades 15 and above. Monitor and measure outcomes every six months.
• Continue to embed and review unconscious bias awareness training as part of the new ‘license to hire’ programme.
• Continue undertaking audits post-recruitment, widening the scope to include unsuccessful candidates.
• Continued focus on our Emerging Talent programme; building apprenticeship, intern, and graduate programmes to enable better career paths for those starting their working lives.
• Continue to promote part time and flexible working roles.

Pay and Recognition

• Ensure that transparency and consistency in decisions regarding promotion and remuneration, including new hires, is considered as part of the refreshed Reward policy.
• Continue to demonstrate SLC’s commitment to fair, transparent and equitable pay and recognition through the submission of the multi-year pay flexibility case to Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.

Performance Related Pay

• Continue to review the Performance-Related Pay process. Engage with Senior Managers and PCS, throughout the pay remit process, to ensure any changes carefully consider fairness, transparency and any equality impacts as well as recognised best practice in this area.
• Further analysis of colleagues’ performance management ratings to be undertaken by department and gender for further analysis of the bonus pay gap.

Performance Development

• A continued focus on greater transparency regarding performance development processes to ensure managers understand that their decisions need to be fair, objective and evidence based.

Career Development

• Map progression routes for colleagues, and ensure all colleagues are aware of how they can progress within SLC. Specific focus on Gender required.
• Ensure Leadership Development programmes are available in SLC to build internal talent pipeline, with a specific focus on women only specific programmes to enable progression.
• Obtain data analysis on the different types of training and development accessed. Review data by gender, identify any trends, obtain insights on barriers to progression for women in the organisation through a variety of engagement methods.
• Build on existing mentoring and coaching, training line managers in coaching and consider reverse mentoring to support women and others who wish to progress into senior roles.

Flexible Working

• Promote flexible working for all colleagues and keep are updating our Flexible Working policy under regular review to reflect this. We are also considering other aspects and opportunities for flexible working such as discussing flexible working ‘from day 1’, greater access to flexitime, and additional flexible working models included within the Policy.
• Collect flexible and hybrid working data broken down by department and gender to identify trends and potential correlation on Gender Pay Gap and application of flexible working practices.
• Ensure vacancies promoted as being available on a part-time or flexible basis where possible.
• Identify members of the Senior Leadership Team that are actively role modelling flexible and hybrid working to promote effectively.
• Promote the use of 1-1s to discuss how roles and workloads are compatible with any new flexible working patterns.

Engagement

• Explore mechanisms to obtain further feedback on female lived experiences in SLC from a variety of sources including pulse surveys, employee engagement surveys and utlising the Women’s Development Network.

Diversity in STEM

• Continue our support for the ‘We Are Tech Women’ network and participating in various STEM events to increase the number of women in technology roles in SLC.
• Continue ongoing activity as part of the STEM Women Steering group set up by Skills Development Scotland and University partnerships. Research additional opportunities to network and promote STEM opportunities for women.
• Continue partnering with schools to encourage and support young women who are interested in STEM careers by promoting tech careers to create a feeder pipeline for our Graduate Apprenticeship programme.
• Utilise Women’s Development Network to attract and retain and support women into STEM roles in SLC.

10. Declaration

We confirm that data reported by the Student Loans Company is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements and methodology set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

Chief Executive: Chris Larmer