To request a more detailed version of the report, including comparisons to previous years, please email [email protected].
Introduction
In 2017 the Government introduced world-leading legislation that made it statutory for all organisations with 250 or more employees to report annually on their gender pay gap. West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust is covered by the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 that came into force on 31 March 2017. These regulations underpin the Public-Sector Equality Duty and require the relevant organisations to publish their gender pay gap data annually by 30 March, including mean and median gender pay gaps; the mean and median gender bonus gaps; the proportion of men and women who received bonuses; and the proportions of male and female employees in each pay quartile.
The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce. If a workforce has a particularly high gender pay gap, this can indicate there may be actions required to address this, and the individual calculations may help to identify what those issues are.
The gender pay gap is different to equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. It is unlawful to pay people unequally because they are a man or a woman.
Equal pay is about men and women being paid the same for the same work, while the gender pay gap is about the difference in average hourly earnings.
Differences in gender pay show a demographic pay gap. By taking the average hourly rate for all employees and comparing the difference in that metric for men and women, gender pay reporting is most notable about female representation in certain roles – not whether a man earns more for the same job.
Gender Pay Gap Reporting Measure
The report sets out the most recent data from April 2023 to March 2024 and will include the following areas.
- Mean gender pay gap in hourly pay – the difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees
- Median gender pay gap in hourly pay – the difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees
- Mean bonus gender pay gap – the difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees
- Median bonus gender pay gap – the difference between the median bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that paid to female relevant employees
- Proportion of males and females receiving a bonus payment – the proportions of male and female relevant employees who were paid bonus pay during the relevant period
- Proportion of males and females in each pay quartile – The proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands
Mean and Median Definitions
The arithmetic mean is achieved by adding up all the numbers in a dataset and then dividing the total by the number of items. For example: a group of numbers of 20, 22, 30, 40, 50, will add together to form 162, which will be divided by the 5 numbers in the group, and result in a mean of 32.4.
The arithmetic median is achieved by identifying the middle number in the list. In the example above, the middle number is 30, this is therefore the median.
The following gender pay calculations have been based on both Mean and Median values.
Gender Profile
Proportion of full pay relevant employees included to calculate the mean and median calculations.
Female was 50.9%.
Male was 49.1%.
Gender Pay Gap Report for WMAS
Gender Pay Gap in Hourly Pay – Mean
The male mean hourly rate was £17.56.
The female mean hourly rate was £17.11, provided a gender pay gap of -2.56%.
Gender Pay Gap in Hourly Pay –Median
The male median hourly rate was £16.64.
The female median hourly rate was £16.30, provided a gender pay gap of -2.03%.
Bonus Gender Pay Gap – Mean & Median
Any payment of a bonus is determined by the Remuneration and Nominations Committee. In previous years the Trust determined only the Chief Executive Officer was eligible for a bonus of up to 10% based on meeting pre-determined performance criteria set by the Remuneration Committee annually. All other Executive Directors on VSM contracts and Staff covered by Agenda for Change are not included in the bonus pay scheme.
There is only person eligible for such payment and they are male.
Proportion of Males and Females in each Pay Quartile
The percentage of females in the upper pay quartile was 47.22% compared to 52.78% male.
The percentage of females in the upper middle pay quartile was 51.86% compared to 48.14% male.
The percentage of females in the lower middle pay quartile was 56.71% compared to 43.29% male.
The percentage of females in the lower pay quartile was 47.84% compared to 52.16% male.
Analysis and Conclusion
WMAS has an active workforce plan in place seeing the recruitment of student paramedics and university graduate paramedics into the workforce since 2010. These roles have been instrumental in changing the demographics of the organisation, as can be demonstrated by the continuing change in the gender profile from 35.3% women in 2007 to 40.7% in 2017, 41.3% in 2018, 42.1% in 2019, 47.3% in 2020, 50.67% in 2021, 51.01% in 2022, 50.46% in 2023 and 50.90% in 2024. This is a rising trend with year-on-year increase of female employees. Please note that the loss of the 111 service resulted in a slight dip in the figures but this is very small and not significant.
There has been a significant improvement in the mean gender pay gap from 2023 (-8.9%) to 2024 (-2.56%) and the median has reduced from -11.42% (2023) to -2.03% in 2024.
There have been significant improvements in the reduction of the gender pay gap both for Mean and Median. For Mean the improvement is by 6.34% and for Median it is 9.03%. Interventions put in place in the action plan may well have been a contributory factor especially as the women’s Springboard development programme has been in operation since 2021. In addition, as the overall demographic of the workforce has balanced out over recent years, this has enabled more female employees the opportunity to gain further experience and develop themselves to be able to move into supervisory and leadership roles as and when they have become available through competitive recruitment processes.
We will continue the progress made and carry over the interventions that appear to have worked into next year.
Bonus Pay
Any payment of a bonus is determined by the Remuneration and Nominations Committee. In previous years the Trust determined only the Chief Executive Officer was eligible for a bonus of up to 10% based on meeting pre-determined performance criteria set by the Remuneration Committee annually. All other Executive Directors on VSM contracts and Staff covered by Agenda for Change are not included in the bonus pay scheme.
Pay Quartiles
In previous years the proportion of women in the lower, lower middle and upper middle pay quartiles was higher than the overall gender profile for the Trust. In the current year there has been a drop of almost 10% of Women in the lower quartile and increase in lower middle quartile (by 5.65%), increase in upper middle quartile (by 1.33%) and increase in the upper quartile (by 4.51%). The figures show an upward trend and a noticeable and significant improvement in the pay quartiles especially in the upper middle and upper quartile. Although there has been an improvement in the upper quartile it is still lower for women as compared to men, albeit it is going in the right trajectory.
In order to support women within the workplace, the WMAS Women’s Network have been working closely with the SpringBoard project for Women in the past few years and this particular intervention has yielded positive results – a report which has been shared with the appropriate Trust Committee for information.
Overall, this is a positive report with significant reduction in the Gender Pay Gap for Women as shown in the figures. An associated action plan is scheduled to be developed in May 2025 in order to consider the most recently available 2024 / 2025 data to continue progress which has been made during 2023/2024.