Law firm Irwin Mitchell has reported a 12.8% mean gender pay gap for fixed hourly pay as at 5 April 2017.
The organisation has reported its gender pay gap data in line with the government’s gender pay gap reporting regulations and ahead of the private sector submission deadline of 4 April 2018.
The gender pay gap reporting regulations require organisations with 250 or more employees to publish the difference between both the mean and median hourly rate of pay for male and female full-time employees; the difference between both the mean bonus pay and median bonus pay for male and female employees; the proportions of male and female employees who were awarded bonus pay; and the proportions of male and female full-time employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands.
Irwin Mitchell’s median gender pay gap for fixed hourly pay as at 5 April 2017 is 15.9%.
Its mean gender pay gap for bonuses paid in the year to 5 April 2017 is 18%, and the median gender pay gap for bonus payments is 20%. Over this period, 24.5% of female employees received a bonus payment compared to 28.6% of male employees.
Under two-thirds (63.8%) of employees in the highest pay quartile at Irwin Mitchell are female, compared to 73.1% in the second quartile, 78.6% in the third quartile and 75.6% in the lowest pay quartile. Of its partner population, 42% are women.
To address its gender pay gap, Irwin Mitchell is continuing its commitment to diversity and inclusion by extending its range of internal networks to provide greater levels of support to staff. This includes the recent introduction of the IM Modern Families group and the IM New Parents group. Furthermore, the law firm will continue to roll out agile working across its offices and promote flexible working opportunities for all employees across every level of the business.
Irwin Mitchell will additionally monitor gender pay through its promotion processes and pay and bonus review cycle, as well as implement leadership development programmes for existing and potential leaders within the business.
Andrew Tucker, group chief executive at Irwin Mitchell, said: “At Irwin Mitchell, we have a long-standing commitment to fairness, equality and inclusion and our aim is for everyone to be able to build a successful career with us. Our employees via regular engagement surveys agree that Irwin Mitchell is an inclusive and diverse place to work.
“We are proud that our pay gap is better than the UK national average and better than the legal sector average. However, we will continue to work on understanding the factors that influence our relatively small pay gap and ensure that we take action to improve this over time. Our policies on recruitment, promotion, pay and bonus have been effective in managing our pay gap but we will continue to focus on further improvements.
“We are focused on monitoring and improving our gender pay gap and are confident that the initiatives we have in place will support this.”