Putting gender equality at the top of the agenda. A joint blog post by 3R Strategy and The Great Initiative.
Rameez Kaleem, Director at 3R Strategy: The new gender pay regulation that came into force yesterday is far from perfect but it will undoubtedly put gender equality and diversity at the top of the agenda for many organisations. 3R Strategy will be working with organisations to carry out equal pay audits to ensure there is no pay inequality. An equal pay audit is the most effective way of establishing whether your organisation is providing equal pay and rewarding employees fairly in practice, as well as demonstrating that you are meeting your equal pay obligations under the Equality Act 2010. We are currently working with RSA, a FTSE 100 organisation, to carry out an equal pay audit across their entire UK workforce.
However, even in the absence of pay inequality a significant gender pay gap will exist due to the lack of representation of women in senior leadership roles. Gender equality and diversity in the workforce requires a culture change and cannot be created by simply mandating quotas: bridging the gap will require long-term commitment and action planning from organisations. Therefore, we are delighted to be partnering with The Great Initiative, a UK registered charity, who work with organisations to actively challenge the ingrained norms and unconscious biases that exist in all of us. We look forward to working together with our common mission and values to help organisations tackle gender inequality and create ethical working environments.
Rebecca Collins, Executive Director at The Great Initiative:
We’re thrilled to join forces with 3R Strategy as their charity partner! With women still not reaching the highest paid roles in anywhere near the same numbers as men, we’re looking forward to the renewed scrutiny of the gender pay gap that this new legislation will bring. In the run up to the first reports being published, now is the perfect time to better support equal pay and start putting concrete steps in place to identify and address imbalances.
We understand it’s a daunting task to publicly release the results of gender pay analysis but we’re looking forward to working with 3R Strategy to make this process, and any subsequent actions to rectify any inequalities, as simple as we can for clients. With partner Fearless Futures, we’ve designed innovative workplace programmes that embed sustainable and meaningful culture change at the heart of organisations. Representing a radical departure from standard diversity and inclusion or unconscious bias training, our interventions rely on a combination of depth and reach, and necessarily cover a wide and intersecting range of inequalities – not just gender, but also race, age, ability, sexual orientation etc.
We’re really looking forward to working with companies and organisations who want to do their bit to eradicate the gender pay gap for good.