Corporate report

UKSA Gender Pay Report 2021 (HTML)

Published 22 November 2021

UKSA Gender Pay Report 2021

1. Foreword

1.1 Paul Bate, CEO

Having joined UKSA in September, I am pleased at this early stage to highlight the Agency’s commitment, and my personal priority, in promoting Diversity and Inclusion through our latest Gender Pay Gap Report.

I will continue to champion psychological safety and openness in the way we as an Agency debate, decide, commit and deliver. I will support all colleagues to build and strengthen the trust within and between teams – inside and outside the Agency. My aim is for us to build an inclusive, warm and diverse environment where we can bring our whole selves to work and enjoy delivering results together.

We have been able to make a difference through our work for both our colleagues within the UKSA and our education work to inspire young people to help enable a flourishing and diverse space sector. Whilst the Agency has made progress, there is still much to do and as an organisation, we re-iterate our D&I commitment through this report and the actions we will take.

1.2 Rachel Gardner-Poole, Director of Organisation Design and Development

During the last year, we have made progress in creating a more inclusive culture at the UK Space Agency (UKSA). Our work has been wide ranging, guided by our colleagues lived experiences at work and targeted to where we can have the greatest impact. The launch of our first People Strategy in June and the formation of our dedicated Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) and Wellbeing team provides us with strong foundations for the future. We have some exciting initiatives planned for the coming year which will help take this forward with a real emphasis on ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential regardless of their background.

1.3 UKSA Women’s Network

The Women’s Network welcomes the Agency’s early publication of the Gender Pay Gap Report. This signals the Agency’s commitment to addressing the gender pay gap which unfortunately continues to persist. We have undoubtedly made progress - however, with a ‘new normal’ following Covid-19, now is an opportunity to redefine our approach to tackling the gender pay gap, which impacts all colleagues. The Women’s Network, alongside HR and the D&I Network, will be working to develop an action plan to address the issues coming out of the report, to improve the lived experience of colleagues disadvantaged by the pay gap and contribute to the Agency’s commitments to creating a more inclusive culture.

2. Background

We are pleased to publish our Gender Pay Gap report for the Financial Year 2020-2021. We have published our reports on a voluntary basis for the last three years to demonstrate our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion. The UKSA has grown rapidly during the period we have been reporting and now employ more than 250 colleagues. This is the point at which reporting becomes mandatory as a part of the legal requirement for public authorities to publish their gender pay gap on an annual basis.

We are all operating in difficult times with Covid-19, however, UKSA has decided to publish its latest report as soon as possible and in advance of the March 2022 deadline to continue to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to creating an inclusive culture, our progress to date and our future ambitions.

In 2019, UKSA identified the need to deliver a Change Programme, to ensure that underpinning capabilities in the Agency were fit to deliver future strategic priorities. The vision statement for our Proteus Change Programme, as it was named, was “We will be an adaptable Agency, that does the basics brilliantly, and is a better place to work for everyone.” People and Culture was a key theme for one of our four projects and significant achievements have been made during 2020/21.

We have developed our People Strategy for 2021-2023, which was launched in June 2021, providing a framework for our Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Strategy.

2.1 What is the Gender Pay Gap?

The gender pay gap is a measure of the difference in the hourly average pay of all men and women across the whole organisation. It does not take into account:

• The nature of the work
• The competencies required to carry out the work compared with another
• The size and accountabilities of a role
• How well a role is performed

2.2 What the Gender Pay Gap is not

Gender pay is not a measure of whether a man and a woman receive “like pay for like work”; that is a measure of equal pay. The requirement to ensure equal pay is not a new one and we have a number of existing measures in place to ensure that we provide equal pay for work of the same or equal value.

2.3 How is the Gender Pay Gap calculated?

The mean average is calculated by adding up all men’s salaries and dividing the total by the number of men, then adding up all women’s salaries and dividing by the total number of women, to arrive at a mean average salary and hourly rate of pay both for men and women. The mean gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the men’s and women’s average hourly rate of pay.

The median is calculated by listing all men’s salaries in ascending order and then taking the salary in the middle of the list and then doing the same for women’s salaries to arrive at a median salary and hourly rate of pay both for men and for women. The median gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the men’s and women’s median hourly rate of pay.

3. The Data (Snapshot Date – 31 March 2021)

The 2021 Gender Pay Gap headline figures for the UK Space Agency show a mean gender pay gap of 10.4% and a median gender pay gap of 18.0%. This is the fourth time the UK Space Agency has published its Gender Pay Gap Report and we have included the figures from previous years for context in our analysis.

This report fulfils the Agency’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.

Gender Pay Gap

The headline 2021 Gender Bonus Gap figures for the UK Space Agency show a mean gender bonus gap of -8.4% and a median gender pay gap of 8.0%. This shows that women were paid higher than men in the mean bonus as has been the case in previous years, but lower in the median. This is the fourth time the UK Space Agency has published its Gender Bonus Gap Report and we have included the figures from previous years for context in our analysis.

Gender Bonus Gap

As the Agency has grown, it has broadly maintained the proportion of Male to Female employees. In 2021, however, the proportion of Female employees was higher than Male employees for the first time. This is comparable with the demographic characteristics in the UK Civil Service workforce, 54.2% of Civil Servants are women.

We have also compared UKSA gender diversity with the external Space Sector as a useful benchmark and compare very positively.

3.1 Closing the gender pay gap

The UKSA mean Gender Pay Gap has decreased by 1.5% to 10.4% in 2021, which is positive news particularly when compared with the point at which we started reporting in 2018, a decrease of 4.6%, albeit improvements can still be made. The median Gender Pay Gap has, however, remained relatively static and will therefore require increased focus. We reflected in previous reports that the difference in grade distribution was likely to be the main driver of the overall UKSA gender pay gap. Whilst our staff numbers have increased, this had resulted in broadly the same proportion of Male to Female employees until 2021.

The figures show that of those employed across UKSA, nearly 27% of men are at Grade 7 or above, compared to 20% of women. As the GPG calculations look at the total workforce, the pay gap in UKSA can be attributed to an uneven split of men and women by grade – with more men occupying higher grades. Notwithstanding this at our very senior level, the split of men and women was relatively even for the Senior Civil Service Grades.

For bonuses, the Gender Bonus Gap for 2021 shows that women were paid higher than men in the mean bonus as has been the case in previous years (-8.4%), but lower in the median (8%). The median bonus gap is strongly influenced by the small numbers receiving a bonus in the higher SCS grades, resulting in a significant increase 28%.

3.2 Women in the UK Space Sector

The first statistics on pay in the UK Space Sector were published in September 2021 by the Space Skills Alliance (Joseph Dudley & Heidi Thiemann), supported by the UK Space Agency. They are drawn from the findings of the 2020 Space Census and it can be accessed spaceskills.org/pay This found that “women consistently earn less than men, a gap that widens with age and seniority from £1k in junior roles to £9k in senior ones.”

The Women in the UK Space Sector report was published in October 2021 by the Space Skills Alliance (Joseph Dudley & Heidi Thiemann), supported by the UK Space Agency. It presents a deep dive into the demographics and experiences of women in the UK space workforce and it can be accessed spaceskills.org/census-women

4. Our Progress

During March 2021, as the implementation phase of the Proteus Change Programme was reaching completion, we commissioned an independent review of diversity and inclusion maturity at the UKSA which found that the Agency was making progress. It recognised the establishment of our dedicated D&I team, increasing levels of awareness across the Agency and increasing leader responsibility and engagement.

There is still much more to do and a targeted Action Plan has been put in place to help us develop a more inclusive culture, as a part of our People Strategy.

Through our colleagues participating in our surveys and assessments, there has been a lot of activity conducted to better understand the sentiment and experience around D&I, Bullying and Harassment, Wellbeing and general experience at the Agency.

This has allowed us to better understand what is already great about the Agency which we will continue to harness and build upon and, where we need to make improvements to support some of the existing challenges so that we can deliver on our People mission.

Through listening to colleagues and working closely together, at the time of publishing this report, we have delivered many achievements.

We ensure our recruitment practices are fair and open, utilising blind sifting and gender balanced/diverse recruitment panels. Success Profiles provides a flexible framework for us to assess candidates and increasing the opportunity for finding the right person.

Our diversity data is regularly shared with the Executive Board to help improve declaration rates which enables us to review our employee life cycle, identify areas for action and an evidence based action plan.

5. Our Work Supporting The Space Sector

Diversity is of fundamental importance to ensure a flourishing space sector and so it is built in to all of the Agency’s education and skills programmes. Role models are important across all age groups and so we aim to use the widest possible range of people from all backgrounds to illustrate working in the sector. Each programme has specific objectives to improve diversity where possible.

5.1 UKSA Education and Skills Programmes

The Destination Space programme funded by us and run by the Association for Science and Discovery Centres delivers family workshops and meet-the-expert events in science centres around the UK. Thorough evaluation demonstrates that the programme continues to reach slightly more girls than boys and more pupils registering highly on multiple indices of deprivation than the national average.

Our biggest programme is called One Million Interactions and uses volunteers from across the sector to engage with young people. It is run for us by ESERO-UK (the Space Education Office) and in its first year it is tracking the numbers of female and BAME ambassadors registered to provide the baseline data against which to check progress in delivering its objectives to challenge stereotypes about who works in the space sector.

The Agency’s Space Placements in Industry (SPIN) scheme provides 8-week internships with organisations across the UK space sector. The scheme raises awareness amongst the student body of opportunities in the space sector and we have sought to use scheme advice to drive awareness of diverse recruitment best practices in companies. Diversity statistics have only recently been included in the metrics, however over the course of the programme the representation of women applicants amongst the cohort has been 27%, marginally below the average for STEM fields as a whole.

Scholarships provided to UK students to attend the International Space University have resulted in 30% since 2010 being offered to women, rising to 50% in the past 2 years. Funding from the Agency has also supported the WISE Campaign to migrate its inspirational STEM careers resource, MySkillsMyLife from paper to an online platform and driven the inclusion of female role models from across the sector.

6. Our Next Steps

During 2021, we will continue to build on our good progress to help us develop a more inclusive culture. Our calendar of activities and initiatives to recognise significant events will continue to promote and encourage open discussion between UKSA colleagues. Following an independent review of Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD), our policies will be reviewed and updated to improve clarity and a training programme put in place to ensure we have the right skills in place and a consistent approach in managing BHD to build psychological safety in teams and a “speak up” culture.

At UKSA, we value everyone as talent and are committed to ensuring that our people have the opportunity to realise their potential, regardless of their background. We will therefore be launching our inclusive approach to Talent Management and our UKSA Leadership Programme to help develop our current and future leaders. Our Reverse Mentoring Scheme will support us in understanding what it is like to walk in others shoes. We are assessing our recruitment strategies to identify areas where we can improve.

We are all aware of the impacts that Coronavirus has had on our ways of working. UKSA colleagues adapted rapidly to working remotely and we are keen to build on the positives of working more flexibly, alongside our current family friendly policies.

We will continue to utilise our People Survey to gather feedback from colleagues, monitor our progress and revise our plans to ensure that we are a diverse and inclusive UK Space Agency which is a great place to work.

As a part of our ongoing commitment to reducing our Gender Pay Gap, we will be developing a more detailed action plan in collaboration with our Women’s and D&I Networks in advance of March 2022.