Think, Act, Report: Tesco
Analysing and Reporting on our gender pay gap
Tesco is the UK’s biggest private sector employer, with over 300,000 colleagues in the UK. As more than half of them are female, we take great care to ensure that they are fairly rewarded for their work and have the same opportunities as male colleagues. Our core values at Tesco are that everyone is welcome and that we aim to treat people as we would want to be treated, so we work really hard to support colleagues whatever their needs or family situation. We run a number of initiatives to make sure we live up to these values, including the regular reporting of the gender pay gap internally.
We recognise the importance of gender equality in the workplace. At Tesco, we completed our first equal pay audit in 2002 by comparing the amount men and women were paid across our entire UK workforce and we’ve been reporting on pay equality ever since. We were a founding signatory of the government’s ‘Think, Act, Report’ scheme when it was launched in 2011.
Taking action
As well as using the gender pay gap figures to look at basic pay, we looked beyond the surface figures to identify any contributing factors behind apparent differences in salary. For example, initial analysis showed a gap when comparing the average pay of our store managers. However once we split the store manager analysis by store format, it became clear that the best paid managers, running our largest Extra stores, had an average of 20 years’ service with the company, whilst the average female store manager had been with us nearer 5 years.
This clearly showed us that the issue is not just about pay, but also about supporting women at Tesco to reach these most senior roles. Networks like Women at Tesco and fairer internal recruitment and pay procedures have helped to redress that gap. We are also proud to support wider initiatives like ‘Inspiring the Future,’ which will see senior women at Tesco visit local schools to inspire young female students.
Last year, our pay gap was 0.45%, which is statistically insignificant and much lower than the national average of 18.6%.
Going forward
We will continue to analyse our gender pay gap each year and publish the information on our website.