Overview
JTL continues to go from strength to strength. Since our first Gender Pay Gap report, our headcount and demographic has changed significantly.
What accounts for our continuing success? We believe that – more than any other factor – it’s the dedication and performance of our people that sets us apart. We also know that we’re stronger as an organisation when we draw upon the diversity of our teams. That means creating a diverse working environment where we value each other and treat one another with respect.
But more than that, it means making sure that women on our team have equal access to promotion, development, ongoing career progression and fair rewards.
How will we make gender equality in JTL a reality? Well, it starts with being honest about where we are today and clear about what we need to shape the future for women in the workplace. Only by measuring our progress in gender diversity and equality can we remain focused on our objectives and put in the resources and strategies necessary to create positive change.
And that’s why Gender Pay Gap reporting is so important.
What is the Gender Pay Gap?
Legislation requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year showing how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees.
A gender pay gap measures the difference between male and female average hourly earnings across a whole organisation, irrespective of their role or seniority. It is expressed as a percentage of male pay. The results will reflect the number of men and women across all roles. So if an organisation has more men in senior roles and more women in junior roles, this will register as a gender pay gap.
Bear in mind that this is different to equal pay. Equal pay requires that men and women are paid the same for carrying out the same or similar jobs – or work of equal value. Paying people differently because of their gender is unlawful. At JTL, we’re confident that jobs of equal value are paid appropriately, and that the pay gap you’ll see in our figures is not caused by unequal pay for jobs of a similar nature.
Gender Pay at JTL
First, some essential definitions:
- The mean gender pay gapis the difference in the average hourly pay for women compared to men.
- The median gender pay gapis the midpoint when you separately line up women’s pay from low to high, and the same for men. The median pay gap is the difference between the hourly pay rate for the middle woman compared to the middle man.
Why we have a gender pay gap
As the current figures demonstrate, JTL has shown consist progress in addressing its gender pay gap since 2017 – the result of our conscious efforts to build a more inclusive, gender balanced workplace.
The remaining pay gap largely reflects the gender make-up of the entire JTL workforce, with the majority of our team being male and a greater proportion of men occupying higher-paid technical and managerial roles. Our current gender split has changed in the last two years from 75% male and 25% female to 65% and 35%, and our nationwide team of assessors alone – predominantly male – accounts for 30% of our 429 employees.
This, in turn, reflects the industry we belong to.
Historically and traditionally, women have been under-represented in the building services engineering sector. It is imperative that we continue to address this imbalance of women in our organisation by investing in our existing talent pool and devising strategies to attract and retain women at all levels in our business.
The Way Forward
Julie Asher-Smith, Director of Human Resources
“In reflecting on this report, we can clearly see that that the gender pay gap is slowly closing – but there is still more to do in the future. I am committed to working closely with the senior leadership team and our colleagues at every level of JTL to drive a fairer, more diverse and more inclusive culture and to redouble our efforts to close the gap.
To achieve these goals, we will continue to bring both creativity and strategic vision to all the following areas of our business:
Talent – Having successfully developed initiatives to improve the gender and racial diversity of our apprentices, we are actively developing ways to do the same within our workforce – identifying barriers to individual growth, reducing attrition rates, improving our business culture and communicating in a more inclusive way.
Recruitment – We are committed to addressing the underrepresentation of women within our industry and are recognised by the wider Building Services Engineering sector for our initiatives in this area – including the establishment of digital ambassadors and efforts to raise awareness of our career options among underrepresented groups including women.
Policies and procedures – Achieving gender equality takes more than fine words; it takes clear goals and practical plans for achieving them. We have designed our future-focused objectives into all our policies and procedures, and work hard to raise awareness of equality issues and practices within our working environment.
Supportive Environment – This goes beyond supporting future female leaders through our training and development framework. We also support flexible working, with family-friendly policies and other initiative designed to help women align their career aspirations with their lifestyle choices.
We know that changing the historic gender imbalance in our organisation will take time, but we are encouraged by the changes that have already happened. I have no doubt that, by working together, we can achieve considerably more in the year ahead.”