UK gender pay statement
Currie & Brown believes in fair and equitable treatment for all employees and for all applicants for employment. We are committed to make full use of the talents and resources of all employees and to provide an environment which will encourage good and productive working relationships throughout the company.
Equal pay for equal jobs
As a physical assets management and construction consultancy, the majority of our staff are in technical positions, and therefore conduct roles that are similar in nature within each grade. While experience in post, or niche skills, will see small pay deviances, our remuneration strategy recognises the need for a consistent framework around how we pay our staff.
Our pay and benefits are, therefore, reviewed at the most senior level in our organisation, to ensure we reward people fairly and competitively.
We have made real inroads into removing the gender pay gap (GPG). Within our technical staff for example, at director level there is a 0.6% difference between our male and female pay, with males earning marginally more. At our associate and associate director level the gap is less than 5%. At the junior levels of the organisation - our assistant level of non-chartered staff - females earn 9.9% more than their male counterparts.
There is a GPG at professional and senior professional level, as a result of the increased volumes of females joining our business in recent years through our graduate scheme. As these staff progress to chartership and become newly promoted, their salary is being compared with individuals with two or three years’ more experience in a comparable position.
Gender pay analysis of technical staff
| Assistant level | Females earn 9.9% more than males |
| Professional level | Males earn 15.6% more than females |
| Senior professional level | Males earn 14.2% more than females |
| Associate level | Males earn 4.7% more than females |
| Associate director level | Males earn 4.3% more than females |
| Director level | Males earn 0.6% more than females |
No promotion or pay review can take place, without supporting information giving context to the proposal. Our group chief executive officer and group people director review the pay recommendations of every single individual in the organisation and ensure pay and promotional decisions are based purely on performance, and do not give rise to any gender pay imbalance. Our focus is designed to remove any subjectivity or unconscious bias that may take place regarding internal recruitment and promotions.
Tackling the under-representation in the industry
Currie & Brown has a commitment, not just to equal pay and a culture of meritocracy, but also to addressing the under-representation of women in our industry.Within the construction industry, there has been a notable lack of female entrants. RICS data from 2017 demonstrates that of all undergraduate and postgraduate entrants to quantity surveying courses, only 20% were female. The construction industry generally reports an even lower percentage, with Office of National Statistics data reporting that as of January 2017 only 13% of individuals within the industry were female.
We continue to tackle the longer-term under-representation of women in the industry by continuing our commitment to recruit and train apprentices and graduates, with 31% of our graduates since January 2017 being female.
We wish to go further as a company to address this imbalance. Our recruitment of graduates is now focused around non-cognate hires. Not only does this give us a broader and more diverse pool of applicants, but it also means we are able to select the very best individuals, rather than solely those who had done degrees in the disciplines in which we work.
As well as this approach to non-cognate graduates, we have also revised how we attract females into our business at all levels. Currie & Brown has relaunched our flexible working policy, designed to ensure that we offer encouragement for part-time and home workers, to help us redress the lack of balance in males/females. Furthermore, Currie & Brown has revised, and significantly improved, our maternity policy as of January 2018, in order to attract more females into our business.
We have also launched a mentoring programme, ensuring positive role models and support for our staff. Over 25% of our females are mentors or mentored, the same percentage as our male staff.
Gender pay reporting
Our statutory obligation is to report on specific metrics for gender pay. These statistics reflect a notably different picture than those that only focus on technical staff. As with many organisations in our sector, our support functions are predominantly female, in roles that tend therefore to carry a lower salary which distorts our statistics. We continue, therefore, to review jobs on a ‘like-for-like’ basis, committed to ensuring that pay and benefits decisions are based solely upon work undertaken, rather than any form of unconscious bias.
Ordinary/hourly pay
- The mean female GPG in hourly pay as a % of men’s pay: 31.87%
- The median female GPG in hourly pay as a % of men’s pay is: 35.57%
Bonus pay
- The % of females who were paid bonuses: 5.67%
- The % of males who were paid bonuses: 2.3%
- The mean female bonus is 36% lower than men’s
- The median female bonus is 47% lower than men’s
It is noted that those who are directors and above who are included within Currie and Brown’s bonus scheme are predominantly male. We have revised our bonus scheme rules in 2017 to incorporate a discretionary element to employees at all levels in the business, providing KPIs are achieved. This is designed to help us balance out the fact that a number of our females are not at director level currently.
GPG quartile figures
- Upper quartile pay is made up of 90.1% male staff and 9.9% female staff
- Upper middle quartile pay is made up of 85.5% male staff and 14.5% of female staff
- Lower middle quartile pay is made up of 66.5% of male staff and 33.5% of female staff
- Lower quartile pay is made up of 56.0% of male staff and 44.0% of female staff
Our aim is to continue to improve our GPG as an organisation.
Signed
Euan McEwan
Group Chief Executive Officer
