Our gender and ethnicity pay gap reports for 2021-2022

Our vision is to create an inclusive and diverse firm where there is no disparity in pay or opportunity, regardless of gender or ethnicity, and all our people can thrive. 

Perry Burton, Head of Partner Development

We have made modest progress in increasing the representation of women at Partner level, building a stronger pipeline of minority ethnic employees, and reducing our gender bonus gap. There are other areas we must address, including improving the representation of women and minority ethnic colleagues at senior levels to address our pay gaps. We are attracting and promoting more women and minority ethnic colleagues than ever before, but need to get better at ensuring people thrive here and choose to stay.

Our pay gaps for 2021/2022 are based on a data snapshot taken in April 2022*

The reportable mean pay gaps (employees only) are:

• gender pay gap of 22% (1% annual increase)
• ethnicity pay gap of 14% (4% annual increase).

When partners are included, our mean pay gaps for 2021/22 are:

• gender pay gap of 37% (3% annual decrease)
• ethnicity pay gap of 30% (1% annual increase).

Our reportable mean bonus gaps (employees only) for 2021/22 are:

• gender bonus gap of 47% (10% annual decrease)
• ethnicity bonus gap of 17% mean (1% annual increase).

2022 key achievements

• We’ve focused our efforts on creating a culture of inclusion as we believe this is vital for all of our people to thrive - our latest internal pulse survey showed that our people continue to feel a strong sense of belonging (85%) and pride (88%) in our firm and 86% say they would recommend the firm as a place to work
• Since 2018, the percentage representation of minority ethnic employees has increased every year, rising from 15% in 2018 to 27% in 2022
• In 2022, 23% of the partner population were women, an annual increase of 4%
• Our senior promotion drive has resulted in a higher percentage of female internal promotions to Director in 2022 - of the 78 Director promotions in 2021, 27% (21 total) were female, and of the 56 in 2022, 49% (27 total) were female
• Our women in leadership programme (Elevate) creates sponsorship and advocacy for our women at senior management level - 58% of women promoted to director since Elevate began attended the programme
• Our women in leadership programme, Breakthrough supports the progression for women between director and partner level – 42% of those who attended Breakthrough were promoted
• We have improved our working family leave policies and extended paid paternity leave from two to six weeks to ensure greater gender equality in working family benefits
• We maintained our position as Top 10 Working Families Employer in 2022 for our approach to flexible working and improving family leave policy
• We were recognised as a Times Top 50 Employer for Women 2022

Data insights for reporting period 2021/22

When we calculate our pay gaps at each level (the like-for-like pay gap) we see that people in our firm are remunerated comparably for work done at similar levels. However, we do still need to increase representation at senior levels to improve our reportable pay gap. We have an equal gender balance up to Manager level but from Senior Manager level and upwards, the percentage of women in senior positions decreases.

Our like-for-like bonus pay gap is wider, which we are looking at addressing by widening access to opportunities for all our people. Whilst our gender bonus gap decreased by 10% since the previous year, the ethnicity bonus gap increased slightly.

As in most organisations, higher bonuses tend to be awarded to more senior people. Therefore, owing to the difference in representation at senior levels in our business, the gender and ethnicity pay gaps increase when we take a snapshot of the average pay for all men and all women in our business (the reportable pay gap).

Targeted actions we’re taking

We have a focus on addressing the systemic, cultural barriers that exist within the workplace which have acted to limit progress and opportunity for women and our ethnic minority colleagues

Each service line seeks to ensure that there are equal and transparent work opportunities for all and has accountability to improve diversity representation at all levels, ensuring that opportunities for promotion and performance are transparent and positively impact diversity in our firm. Performance ratings are reviewed by gender and ethnicity across all service lines, together with a review of the proportion of people who have been promoted.

We are focused on sponsoring and accelerating the progression of diverse talent, and in April 2023 we will pilot a sponsorship programme developed to support diverse talent, focusing mainly on gender and ethnicity.

We also continue to promote diverse role models within the firm and focus on enhancing the inclusion skills of our people, particularly our leaders, through inclusive leadership training.

Perry Burton, Head of Partner Development

We have set specific targets across each of our diversity strands and track our progress against these. These include a mixture of percentage representation targets, improving how our people feel (as measured in our firm-wide pulse surveys), increasing the percentage of our people who feel comfortable sharing their inclusion and diversity data with us and improving our position with independent employer indices that challenge our strategy and push us to continuously improve.

Further specific actions include:

For gender:

• A specific gender action plan identifying and removing barriers - led by a senior female partner and supported by two senior managers seconded from the business
• Continuing to develop and invest in women in leadership programmes – aimed at senior managers stepping up to Director, and those stepping up to Partner
• Continuing to improve family leave policies
• Tailored programme to assist people returning from maternity/ family leave, ensuring a smooth, supported transition back to work
• Promoting hybrid working and job shares to retain and attract high potential female talent
• All Partners will soon attend Gender Allyship workshops, to equip them with knowledge about how to create opportunity and advance women more deliberately in the workplace
• Investment and commitment to support colleagues affected by the menopause, as well as specific training for people managers

For ethnicity

• A specific ethnicity and cultural heritage action plan identifying and removing barriers, led by a senior black director and supported by two managers seconded from the business
• The ethnicity action plan is governed by an Ethnicity board which is sponsored and supported by senior leaders in the firm
• 2025 Black Talent Targets, for Manager to Partner levels, have been agreed with each of our Service Lines
• Planning to roll out a programme of learning about managing cultural difference to all our People Managers
• Coaching for minority ethnic employees, which aims to improve engagement, career capital and progression
• Our reverse mentoring programme pairs leaders with associates and executives who help them to better understand the experience of those who are underrepresented in the workplace

Reported Pay Gaps for 2021 to 2022

A snapshot taken in April 2022

Footnotes

_{*Changes to our pay gap calculation - refinements in our data handling processes have enabled us to eliminate inconsistency in how we treated long-term absence and special categories of employees. With this improvement, our mean gender pay gap for 2021 registers some 2.5% lower than we previously reported. For clarity and comparison purposes, data from this year and last year have been adjusted in line with this improved methodology.}

_{** Revised figures considering new calculation of pay gap* are in brackets.}