Gender pay gap reports

Our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) strategy, launched in March 2021, outlines our commitment to creating an equal, diverse and inclusive workforce, including a focus on identifying and addressing gender inequality and bias within the organisation.

Our gender pay dap data is an important (but not the only) measure of gender equality in our workforce, and one that will help to inform our plans and activities as we continue to work towards our EDI goals.

We are committed to reducing the gender pay gap at GOSH Charity and while we have seen some improvements, we recognise that there is still work to be done to become the equal and inclusive organisation we aspire to be.

Our Gender Pay Gap results cover the 2024-25 reporting period, with a snapshot date of the 5th April 2024. As of this date, GOSH Charity had 253 employees and our gender balance was:

- 194 females (77%)

- 59 males (23%)

We have submitted our data since gender pay gap reporting began as part of our commitment to create a diverse and inclusive workforce. We were disappointed to see our mean and median gender pay gap increase in 2024. The mean gender pay gap increased from 11.6% in 2023 to 15.4% in 2024, and the median gender pay gap increased from 10.3% in 2023 to 14.3% in 2024.

We are committed to closing this gap. Our new EDI strategy, due to be published in summer 2024 notes the gender pay gap as a key metric of progress in our ambitions to have an equitable, diverse, and inclusive culture for all. Actions on how we plan to address the gender pay gap are detailed in this report. It is worth noting that as a relatively small organisation, small changes can have a significant shift in the pay gap.

Our Gender Pay Gap data is an important measure of gender equality in our workforce and will help inform our plans and activities as we continue to work towards our EDI goals.

Like many charities, we have a predominantly female workforce; just over three-quarters of GOSH Charity's workforce is female, and our team of five Directors, led by CEO Louise Parkes, comprises four females and one man.

• Our mean gender pay gap has increased by 3.8% from 11.6% in 2023 to 15.4% in 2024
• Our median gender pay gap has increased by 4% from 10.3% in 2023 to 14.3% in 2024
• There are fewer women in our upper quartile since 2023 (3.7%) and fewer men in our lower quartile compared to 2023 (2.5%).
• The pay gap is mostly driven by the overrepresentation of males in our upper quartile in comparison to the rest of the Charity, combined with the fact that whilst women are represented on both the lower and upper spectrum of the upper quartile, men are mostly represented in the most highly paid roles. Nearly half of all men in the Charity are in the upper quartile (41%).
• Enhancing gender imbalances in all quartiles is a good way to reduce the gap, but focusing on the upper quartile would be most impactful.

GOSH Charity does not provide employee bonuses. In previous years, we have reported on ‘bonuses’ within our gender pay gap, using our employee recognition and long service voucher scheme data as a basis.

These awards are likely to change year on year, depending on the charity's key projects in different departments and the number of employees receiving long service awards – which fundamentally shifts the data. On reflection, we feel that using our recognition awards for bonus analysis does not provide us with impactful or reliable data to work with.

As such, we have decided not to report on our employee recognition data going forward. For transparency, we will continue to share this information internally with our colleagues.

1. Supported the launch of a Women’s Network at the Charity, for which our CEO is the senior sponsor
2. Introduced bite-size sessions on EDI and unconscious bias in recruitment, alongside a new recruitment policy & standardised guidance for recruitment to ensure consistent good practice
3. Provided briefings and guidance to managers on key changes in our new policies and updated our Menopause and Menstruation Policy
4. Created a dashboard dedicated to monitoring recruitment and progression diversity data within GOSH Charity
5. Partnered with other charity organisations to provide access to a cross-charity mentoring scheme for all colleagues
6. Regularly reported our progress on EDI to our Senior Leadership Team and EDI Programme Board
7. Conducted a second external benchmarking review and a full Equality Impact Assessment as part of our Total Reward project to increase transparency in our approach to pay and reward processes
8. Made changes to our recruitment processes by anonymising names on all applications

Our ambition to create a more inclusive organisation will be set out in our second EDI strategy. Action plans from this strategy will include long-term and visionary initiatives aimed at closing the gender pay gap for good.

1. Move to a new recruitment platform (ATS) which will allow us to transition to more skills-based recruitment in the longer term. This means we can focus more on transferable skills rather than previous charity sector experience, which should diversify our talent pool. Once this is in place, we will conduct an EQIA on our recruitment processes.
2. Explore how we can enhance the flexibility of our job roles, with a focus on part-time work, parental leave returners, and job shares
3. Explore where we can utilise more targeted referrals and agencies to support more female talent into the organisation where roles are currently male-dominated (both within the Charity and wider industry)
4. Implement a new HR system which will enable more granular data collection and analysis on what the most impactful activities will be to shift the gap
5. Continue to work with our newly created Women’s Network to identify areas for improvement.
6. Review how we can better support those with caring responsibilities at the Charity, as part of our wellbeing plan for the 25/26 financial year.
7. Several of our initiatives under our new People Strategy, due to commence in 25/26 should positively impact our pay gap. These include looking at our succession planning and an exploration of positive action, alongside an Early Careers Strategy, within which we can focus on how to enable a better gender balance across all four quartiles.