Gender Pay Gap Report, April 2023

Our mean gender pay gap has improved year on year with a reduction of 7.41%, and our median gender pay gap remains constant. We continue to see a gender pay gap that is influenced by a larger representation of men in senior roles and a higher concentration of women in junior positions. This pattern, echoing the trend from last year, is significantly impacted by the pool of female candidates available for our Tech teams, where recruitment is competitive and attracts high salaries.

Our bonus pay gap has also fluctuated since last year, there are more females receiving bonuses this year than males and the mean bonus gap also indicates an improvement year on year.

At the time of this report, 56% of our team identified as female and 44% as male.

What have we changed since our last report?

• Our Women in Leadership mentoring programme continues to go from strength to strength. The second group are currently completing the final stages of the scheme and we are committed to continuing to invest in this programme.
• In the last year, we have established a Women@Awaze group who meet regularly to identify actions to help improve the ratio of senior women at Awaze including development and retention strategies.
• Following last year’s growth in our internal Women in Tech (WIT) community we continue to grow and gain momentum. Over the last year we’ve created two focus areas to target where we can make the most difference. These include:
• Creating a WIT community of both men and women, aiming to support and create an environment where our women feel empowered and inspired. We hosted our first international virtual event; a Q&A panel made-up of internal and external speakers, addressing some of the challenges faced by women in tech. We’ve since hosted an in person networking event with lightning talks and opportunities to network, we have more of these planned. We’ve also just attended our third consecutive UK WIT conference event where a member of our team was invited to speak. Some of our Manchester based team members are taking part in the Digital MentorHER scheme, both as mentees and mentors.
• Since December 2023 several members of our WIT community have completed STEM ambassador training through ‘Tech She Can’, a charity aimed at changing the ratio of women in tech by working at grassroot level to encourage girls to pursue STEM subjects. Our team have started to work in the community, visiting schools and we have lots of opportunities lined up to speak at events.
• Several women team members have role modelled their stories through our internal ‘YourStory’ diversity features, including our recent celebrations for International Women’s Day.

Continuing to make changes for the future

• Our Women@Awaze group has been working together for 10 months focusing on how we can replicate its success to support women across Awaze.
• Our WIT group have created a Tech Internship programme, starting this year, recruiting and supporting interns across our Tech Teams.
• We continue to monitor our data and metrics, scrutinise the success of our programmes, policies and our flexible working practices to ensure we attract and retain the best talent.