Gender pay position in 2022

Wesleyan is a mutual society that puts our caring values and the needs of our members ahead of short-term gain. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse organisation as we recognise that genuine diversity of thought leads to better decision-making and makes us more reflective of our customers.

This is the sixth year where we have reported our gender pay gap. This gap measures the difference between the earnings of men and women across the organisation.

Despite our efforts, our gender pay gap has increased compared to the figures reported for 2021. We have committed to exploring our employee data further, to better understand the factors driving the pay gap and introduce initiatives that will address the root cause.

Wesleyan gender pay gap results

As of April 2022, Wesleyan's average mean gender pay gap was 28.54% (2021: 25.67%) and the median gender pay gap was 34.61% (2021: 31.34%). This is a Group position that includes our subsidiary companies.

Wesleyan bonus pay gap results

As of April 2022, the mean bonus pay gap was 48% (2021: 45.40%).

Over 89% of employees received a bonus payment. The bonus pay gap is larger than the gender pay gap because we have a significantly higher percentage of women employed on a part-time basis compared with men.

Some bonus payments at Wesleyan are calculated as a percentage of annual salary. Therefore, even though the basis for awarding a bonus is identical, because we have more women working part-time than men, the bonus pay gap is larger.

Our data in detail

Two factors that contributed to the change in our pay gap are changes we made last year to our organisational structure and benefits.

The sale of the Wesleyan Bank in February 2022 reduced our overall headcount, changing the number of colleagues included in our calculations and impacting our female representation.

Furthermore, we reduced the number of company cars we provide and replaced them with a car cash allowance, increasing the remuneration for some of our sales force where there are more males than females.

These changes don’t fully explain the gap, but they provide some clarity on why we’ve seen a slight increase despite increasing the number of females in Senior Leadership roles and above to 38%, surpassing our target of 35% for 2022.

Women in Senior Leadership

One of the reasons for our pay gap is that there is a higher proportion of men employed in senior positions compared with women.

Over the past few years, we have put in place a number of initiatives to address this imbalance and by the end of 2022 we had increased our female representation at senior leadership to 37.97%. Which meant we exceeded our target of 35% for 2022.

At the end of March 2023, we have reached 39.53% female representation and will aim to continue this trajectory to meet our target of achieving a minimum of 42% representation by the end of 2025.

The initiatives used to address our senior leadership imbalance are also reflected at all job grades; we require diverse shortlists for all our vacancies and use diverse panels at interviews. In addition to our work within recruitment, we also include a gender lens in our pay review process to ensure that no pay inequalities are introduced at this stage.

How are we working to close the gap?

During 2022-23 we have worked hard to develop our employee value proposition and put further actions in place to support the development of female colleagues.

The minimum salary that we offer has been increased to £20,614 and we have increased our pay budget to move salaries to a more competitive position in the market. Of those impacted, over 65% are female.

In October 2022, the majority of employees received a £1,000 Cost-of-Living payment; the same amount was paid to all employees regardless of their salary or length of service.

In addition to financial enhancements, we are supporting working parents by enhancing our maternity/adoption pay to 16 weeks at full pay. We also increased our paternity leave to 8 weeks at full pay, 6 weeks of which can be taken at any point throughout the 12 months following the birth/adoption. To make these benefits more accessible to colleagues, we’ve also reduced the length of service required from 2 years to 6 months.

As proud supporters of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) #MakingFlexibleWork Charter, we are “Happy to Talk Flexible”. All job roles are advertised as flexible, and colleagues can request flexible working from their first day in service. We have also provided more guidance to line managers via training and clearer policies around flexible working.

Our employee networks continue to champion issues that are close to our colleagues’ hearts, including addressing some of the barriers that women experience in the workplace. As a result of their feedback, we introduced line manager training and guidance on the menopause.

We continue to make inclusion a priority for our business, by explicitly linking it to our executive reward; our leadership have targets for representation within their teams, and a target based on creating an inclusive culture at Wesleyan (monitored by employee sentiment). This ensures that driving equality, and therefore reducing our pay gap, remains front of mind for our leadership.

Our Commitment

Although we’re disappointed to see that our pay gap has increased slightly this year, we anticipate that the changes we made in 2022 will reduce our gap in 2023.

We’re committed to scrutinising our pay data to explore the root causes behind the change to our pay gap, and continually reviewing our action plan to address these.