Gender pay gap

We want all our staff to succeed in their roles and be able to access opportunities equally. Gender pay reporting helps us to achieve this goal. Reporting on the gender pay gap in a set format is also a legal requirement. To calculate the data in this report we have used the terms ‘women’ and ‘men’ to calculate their legal gender.

The gender pay gap reporting shows any difference between average earnings for men and women across the whole organisation, regardless of role. This is not the same as ‘equal pay’ which deals with pay differences between men and women who carry out the same or similar roles or work of equal value.

Having a gender pay gap does not automatically mean there is an equal pay issue within an organisation. We have a policy of paying employees equally for the same or equivalent work regardless of gender.

In common with many other charities The National Deaf Children’s Society has a higher percentage of women in the workforce than men. We are female led with our upper quartile 86% female. Our overall gender split is 78% female and 22% male.

Headline figures as of 5 April 2023

Data is taken from all employees on pay which has not been reduced by sickness, maternity, paternity, adoption, or other absence on the snapshot date of 5 April 2023. These are the ‘relevant employees’.

Mean gender pay gap

The average of the figures for men and the average of the figures for women - calculated by adding up the hourly pay rates and dividing by the number of people in the list.

• On average women earn 15.4% less than men. 
• This is above the Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimated national mean pay gap of 14.3% (ONS data 1 November 2023) and an increase of 3.9% from our pay gap reported in 2022.

Median gender pay gap

The salary that lies at the midpoint or the central figure of a list of all the hourly pay rates of men and women from the highest to the lowest.

• This is 22.2% which means that the median female employee is paid 22.2% less than the median male employee.
• This is an increase from the 17.9% pay gap reported for 2022 figures and is above the national median gender pay gap of 14.3% (ONS data 1 November 2023).

Quartile pay bands

The quartile information is calculated by listing all salaries from highest to lowest and then splitting that information into four equal quarters to determine the percentage of male as against female employees in each quartile.

Upper pay quartile

Includes all employees whose standard hourly rate places them in the top 25%.

• The proportion was 58.3% female to 41.7% male.

The % of female employees in the Upper pay quartile increased slightly since 2022 figures from 55.7% to 58.3%.

Upper middle pay quartile

Includes all employees whose standard hourly rate places them above the median but below the upper quartile.

•  The proportion was 81.9% female to 18.1% male.

The % of female employees in the Upper middle pay quartile has increased since 2022 figures from 55.7% to 81.9%.

Lower middle pay quartile

Includes all employees whose standard hourly rate places them below the median but above the lower quartile.

• The proportion was 84.9% female to 15.1% male.

The % of female employees in the Lower middle pay quartile has remained relatively static since 2022, although there was a slight increase from 83.3% to 84.9%

Lower pay quartile

Includes all employees whose standard hourly rate places them at or below the lower quartile.

• The proportion was 86.1% female to 13.9% male.

The % of female employees in the Lower pay quartile has remained relatively static since 2022, although there was an increase from 83.3.6% to 86.1%.

Understanding more about the underlying causes for the gender pay gap

We’ve looked at our data and have identified some differences that contribute to our gender pay gap.

• A higher proportion of male employees are based in our London office which attracts higher salaries. Fewer male employees work as regular home workers. This may be connected to the types of roles based in our London office including IT, Finance, Fundraising and Communications, which tend to attract more male candidates. The roles undertaken by our homeworkers, have tended to be in service provision or advocacy & campaigning roles which are more likely to attract a greater proportion of female candidates and tend to be on lower pay bands.
• A higher proportion of men in management and leadership roles in the upper pay quartiles compared to a greater proportion of women in the lower paid quartiles (67% of the total male workforce work in the upper pay quartiles compared to only 45% of the total female workforce).
• Anyone on reduced or nil pay on 5 April 2023, is not included in the pay gap report. This includes anyone on maternity, sick, shared parental, paternity and work breaks, which tends to disproportionately impact more female members of staff. On 5 April 2023, we had 3 female staff members on reduced pay because of maternity leave. We had zero male members of staff on reduced pay on this date.
• Sessional workers, who work on an ad hoc basis, have been included in these calculations and tend to be in lower paid roles. Sessional worker roles are predominately filled by female workers (c.80%).

Moving forward

We’re committed to gender pay equality and, although our mean gender pay gap is below the national average, we’re committed to reducing the gap on both measures further. We’ve identified several measures that we believe will make a difference.

• We introduced an agile organisational design in May 2023 which is focused on upskilling, coaching and developing our staff.
• In March 2024, we appointed a full time Diversity, Equality and Inclusion post.
• We’ll continue to review our recruitment processes to remove barriers and unconscious bias and encourage the internal promotion of our staff, including opportunities for secondment to further individual development.
• We’ll widen our pool of possible candidates by encouraging applicants from genders not typical to the role, such as more women in IT and more men in our service provision, by continuing to advertise on diverse advertising platforms, using gender neutral language in our job adverts and highlighting our family friendly policies, flexible smarter working arrangements and wellbeing initiatives.
• Through our learning and development programmes we will continue our commitment to developing the skills of our people, so they maximise their potential. We’ll encourage their take up of a broad range of e-learning options and keep a focus on coaching, mentoring, experiential workshops and a comprehensive evaluation framework. We continue participation in a Charity Mentoring Network scheme to support the development of our female leaders and specialists and increase female representation in the higher pay quartiles.
• We’ll continue to develop a more comprehensive data set to help understand the causes of our gender pay gap and work to address them.
• We’ll learn from other organisations which have zero or smaller gender pay gaps.

I confirm that the information contained in this report is accurate.

Maria Chambers
Chief Operations Officer