Transparency data

BPDTS Ltd: gender pay gap report and data 2019

Published 12 March 2020

Background

We value diversity and are committed to creating a culture where everyone is valued, respected, treated fairly, and with dignity. We want all our people to feel included and everyone to feel they have a voice they can use, and that is heard. We’re therefore welcoming of the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) legislation, which was introduced in April 2017 by the Government Equalities Office. This requires UK organisations with 250 or more employees to publish their gender pay gap. The figures are calculated using the salary data of all employees in scope of the calculations set out in the legislation on 31 March 2019.

The gender pay gap shows a measure of the difference between the average pay of men and women across an organisation, irrespective of their role or seniority. This is different from equal pay, which is about ensuring men and women who are performing similar work are paid equally.

We promote the fair treatment of all employees in our pay and reward strategy. We have also published these mandatory figures on the Government Equality Office’s designated gender pay gap reporting website.

Organisational context

Over the past year we’ve continued to evolve; growing in size and changing to realise our vision for the future. One of the key elements for us now, and going forward, is the focus we are placing on putting our people at the heart of what we do. We’re committed to supporting, developing, and engaging with our people to ensure we’re attracting and retaining top digital talent within the industry. We want to be known as an employer who creates an environment where people can be accepted, included, and be at their best by being themselves.

We’ve continued to invest; not only in creating professional communities for our people but also by further reinforcing the behaviours and values that we want to see and encourage.

Working within the digital and technology arena, we’re aware of the challenges the sector faces in increasing the number of female employees to rebalance the industry’s male dominance. We’ve strived to establish and invest in a ‘Women in Digital Network’. Its aims are to encourage more women to consider careers in the industry and celebrate the female role models we have within our company. We’re proactively evaluating how we can refine our approach to recruitment, selection, and the day to day running of the company to make us an employer of choice for digital professionals – regardless of their gender, race, class or any other characteristic.

Organisation structure

Unlike the majority of the public sector, we don’t operate within a grade structure. For our external recruitment, we use market-based intelligence to set salaries based on the wider labour market rates paid in the digital technology sector. As a public sector organisation, we’re governed by HM Treasury’s pay remit. This means we’re subject to current public sector pay policy and pay restrictions.

As a service provider to DWP, we’re committed to ensuring we attract, retain, and grow expert digital professionals who can provide the most effective, efficient, and outstanding services to our customer and the end-user, the citizen. As part of our aim to deliver exceptional levels of service, we’ve established Communities of Practice, organised by service area. Communities of practice are groups of employees with similar or closely-related skills, experience, and job responsibilities. The community interaction helps our people to collaborate more efficiently and share ideas, so they can continue to develop professional expertise.

Each of our Communities of Practice is led by a by a Digital Service Practice Lead (DSPL), who is an expert in their profession. Our practice leads are responsible for setting career pathways, identifying suitable learning interventions, and development opportunities for the people within their community. As thought leaders, they bring the latest industry thinking, technological developments, and best practice learning into the practice. They encourage members to share their knowledge and skills, while investing in the learning and development opportunities around them. They also attract new talent into the company by inspiring other digital professionals to join BPDTS and our community of experts.

Groups of our employees volunteer together to invest in and support wider colleagues wellbeing. They help to ensure we continue to embed our values, and make our company an inclusive, respectful, inspiring, and diverse place to work.

Gender pay gap data

DWP gender composition

The gender composition of our workforce, that was in scope of our gender pay gap calculation, shows we‘ve significantly more male (82%) than female (18%) employees. This trend reflects the technical industry in which we operate, however it does not lessen our commitment to encouraging more talented women into our organisation in the future. We actively track the percentage of female applicants to our roles. This helps us monitor how attractive we are as an employer for women.

Gender pay gap

At 5.5%, our mean gender pay gap is significantly smaller in comparison with many other digital and technology companies. This represents a reduction in the gender pay gap for Ordinary pay since last year from 8.1% to 5.5%. Our median gender pay gap is 0.2%, a reduction in the gender pay gap for Ordinary pay from 1.7% since 2018.

Women and men are paid equally for doing the same or similar jobs. The key driver behind our pay gap reflects the technical industry in which we operate. However, we’ve made encouraging progress on initiatives set out in last year’s report.

Bonus pay gap

-5.3% Mean gender pay gap - Bonus pay in the 12 months ending 31 March

-3.7% Median gender pay gap - Bonus pay in the 12 months ending 31 March

Male 46.2% The proportion of male and female employees paid a bonus in the 12 months ending 31 March

Female 41.7% The proportion of male and female employees paid a bonus in the 12 months ending 31 March

The table above shows that 46.2% of men and 41.7% of women received a bonus payment. These percentages are low because of the large number of new joiners who were not eligible for an award in 2019. However, the gender pay gap for bonus pay is in favour of women, although a higher proportion of male employees received a bonus.

Pay by quartiles and gender composition of BPDTS

The table below shows that the greatest percentage of our female employees are sitting in the upper middle quartile. We are, however, mindful that the upper quartile has the strongest male dominance amongst all of the quartiles.

Quartilies	Female %	Male %
Lower quartile	18.9%	81.1%
Lower middle quartile	14.3%	85.7%
Upper middle quartile	8.8%	91.2%
Upper quartile	24.2%	75.8%

As we have grown in size over the past 12 months, we’ve strived to increase our gender representation to attract and retain talented female digital professionals. As well as sharing their knowledge and skills, they help us to create an even more inclusive, representative and diverse workplace. We know this can be a challenge within the wider digital and technology sector, which tends to be more male dominated. But, our commitment to increasing gender diversity still further continues, especially in our most technical roles.

Explaining the causes of our gender pay gap and acting to close it

Compared to the average gender pay gap in the digital technology sector, we know that our 5.5% mean gap is significantly lower. Our analysis of the overall gender pay gap shows that it relates to our workforce representation of males and females at different levels in the organisation, rather than difference in pay of males and females at the same level.

But, we’re continuing to strive to eradicate any gap between genders. We will be undertaking more detailed analysis to identify if any differences in pay between employees undertaking the same or similar roles can be objectively justified, with a view to narrowing the gap still further.

These include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Recruitment, retention and creating a diverse workforce

1.1. we continue to undertake anonymous recruitment, aiming to eliminate unconscious bias from the early stages of our recruitment process.

1.2. our selection panel members have to have completed training for unconscious bias and diversity and inclusion to ensure they adhere to our policies and procedures. Where possible, we create a gender mix on panels to reflect the diversity of our workforce.

1.3. we ensure our jobs are advertised using gender-neutral language in job adverts, and use inclusive language in all communications, to gain the attention and interest of diverse applicants. We’ll continue to promote female role models externally and internally.

1.4. having an inclusive approach to internal progression, all our roles are advertised and selection is based on skills relevant to the role.

1.5. we continuously monitor attrition rates to identify any incidence of high female leavers.

1.6. currently, women represent 18% of the whole workforce. This year, 21% of our employees who rate as exceeding or significantly exceeding their objectives were women. We’ll continue to actively monitor the gender split, to ensure our approach to assessing and recognising performance and talent enables people to demonstrate their potential fully.

1.7. through our pay award, we look to reward individual performance, regardless of gender, ensuring that those receiving financial rewards are doing so based upon their contribution to the organisation.

2. Career mobility

2.1. we continue to grow our ‘career lattice’ to allow people to develop and grow, ensuring everyone can take control of their career and development without being excluded due to any external pressures or conflicts they may be facing.

2.2. we’re delighted to have recruited a number of women into some of our most senior roles over the last 12 months. We’ve male colleagues who promote their wider family lives and commitments openly, acting as role models to our people.

3. Creating a culture which celebrates diversity and supports all employees

3.1. we actively encourage smarter working, job-sharing, and part-time working to support employees with caring responsibilities, and encourage a good work-life balance for all employees.

3.2. we continue to champion mental health awareness. By creating a more inclusive culture, we aim to provide more support to colleagues where it’s needed.

3.3. our Women in Digital group continues to be active in promoting exciting opportunities available to women when considering a career in the industry. They take part in initiatives to coach and mentor women, to increase their confidence and engagement skills.

3.4. we’re focused on transforming our culture and are committed to empowering every individual and. ensuring we have a more diverse business.

Action plan

Actions that will be taken to tackle our gender pay gap will be embedded in our Diversity and Inclusion action plan.

Declaration

We confirm that data reported by us is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements and methodology set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

Loveday Ryder
Chief Executive

Clare Millington-Hume
Head of People