Ethnicity pay gap

Our 2023 position and commitment

Our pay gap position

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.

In 2023, we are reporting our ethnicity pay gap data for the first time. Reporting is not compulsory in the same way that it is for the gender pay gap, however, we want to be leaders in best practice, and we feel it’s important for us to be transparent around this and reassure employees that we are taking action to address our gap. Analysing ethnicity pay information is one way that we can identify and investigate any pay disparities.  

Our report measures the difference between the average earnings of Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and non-BAME employees at Wesleyan in April 2022. In line with the gender pay gap it does not measure equal pay, which relates to the pay that people receive when in the same job, or for doing work of equal value.  

The ethnicity pay gap is calculated using the EDI data recorded by employees. Anyone who identifies as having a non-white background is included in the BAME group for reporting purposes.

Wesleyan ethnicity pay gap results

The mean ethnicity pay gap for Wesleyan was 31.9% for April 2022. This shows that across the Society, on average all employees in the BAME group are paid less than all employees in the non-BAME group. We know that one of the main reasons for our ethnicity pay gap is due to a lack of BAME representation at senior levels, a factor which we are working hard to address.

Wesleyan ethnicity bonus gap results

The ethnicity bonus gap is 50.9%, This shows that on average employees in the non-BAME group are paid a higher bonus payment. The reason for this is that some of our bonus schemes are calculated from a percentage of an employee’s salary and many of our BAME colleagues are in more junior roles where the bonus payments are lower than those for more senior roles.

Senior leadership representation

Representation of BAME employees across Wesleyan is 23%, however we have a much higher percentage of BAME employees within our more junior positions than in senior roles.

At a senior leadership above level, we have 12.6% BAME representation; this percentage has been gradually improving but there is still much more to do to increase representation. With this aim, we have a target in place to reach 16% BAME representation at senior leadership level by the end of 2023. Our Executive are firmly in support of this target, and as an organisation we are actively implementing more inclusive recruitment and development processes.  

These were our results for previous years which show that we are improving BAME representation:

  • April 2021 – 6.4% 
  • April 2022 – 9.4%
  • April 2023 – 12.6%

How are we working to close the gap?

The four key areas that we are focusing on this year which we hope will to increase BAME representation and reduce our ethnicity pay gap include:

  • Interrogating our data on recruitment, pay, development and retention to ensure we understand the barriers that currently exist so we can actively work to remove them.
  • Monitoring our pipeline of future BAME leaders and identifying specific development programmes with the aim to provide career progression opportunities for our BAME talent.
  • Reviewing and evolving our approach to inclusive recruitment, updating our training for recruiting managers and ensuring that we have diverse recruitment panels in place for all roles. Our recruitment activity is regularly reviewed to better understand the diversity of candidates from application through to shortlisting and appointment stages. 
  • Building links with local communities to engage with under-represented communities both at 6th form and students at local universities to promote and raise awareness of careers in financial services. We have a number of external organisations we are working with which focus on supporting under-represented and less advantaged young people with the skills, connections, and knowledge they need to thrive in the future.

Our commitment

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