In 2017, the Government made it mandatory for all large organisations to report their gender pay gap. We welcomed this move as an important step towards having a more diverse and inclusive railway.
This is the fourth year that we have published our gender pay gap report. Our results show an increase in our pay gap, however we are confident that we are on the right track as we recognise the importance of improving the gender diversity of our organisation.
- Our 2020 median gender pay gap is 12.2 per cent and represents an increase of 0.6 per cent from 2019.
- Our pay gap remains lower than the current UK pay gap of 15.5 per cent.
- The proportion of women in the business has increased this year to to 18.4 per cent from 17.3 per cent last year.
Although our gender pay gap has increased slightly again this year it is not unexpected. We expect our pay gap to fluctuate as we focus on addressing the gender imbalance at Network Rail.
Our 20by20 initiative was designed to increase the proportion of women in Network Rail to 20 per cent by the end of 2020. Although we did not quite meet this target we are proud of the progress we have made,as we transition to the Gender Matters programme moving forward. You can read more about our strategy to create a gender balanced workforce and our gender pay gap in our full report.
2020 Gender pay gap report
Through the Gender Matters programme we are taking the momentum we have built through the 20by20 project and are applying the same dedication to continue to build a more diverse workforce and inclusive culture. We’ve refreshed our target and want to increase the number of women in the business by 50 per cent across the control period which should take us to 26 per cent female by 2024.
Andrew Haines, chief executive
Gender pay gap and equal pay
The gender pay gap and equal pay are often confused, but the two are quite different.
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men compared to the average pay of women within an organisation, across all levels of the business. What this means in practice is that if women do more of the less well-paid jobs, the gender pay gap is usually bigger.
Equal pay, on the other hand, is the legal requirement for men and women to be paid the same for performing the same work or work of equal value. In 2015 Network Rail completely overhauled its management pay structure to deliver equality, fairness and transparency.
Transparent pay means that we can be confident that our gender pay gap is driven by the structure of our workforce and the concentration of males in more senior positions, rather than our pay structure, which is gender neutral by design.
This has helped us to focus our efforts on attracting and recruiting more women, retaining them within our workforce and progressing our female talent into the most senior roles within the business.