Companies with more than 250 employees have until April 4th to publish their gender pay data or face fines, yet 5,000 organisations are yet to do so.
Women at Towers Watson made up 28 per cent of higher paid jobs and 57 per cent of lower paid jobs. WTW’s mean gender bonus gap stood at 68.8 per cent, while Mercer’s was 60.2 per cent.
Aon had not reported its gender pay gap at the time of writing.
Mercer says its gender pay gap, which shows the gap between the mean and median earnings of women and the mean and median earnings of men within the company, results from the fact that there are more men in senior roles than women.
Men made up 76 per cent of top quartile earners at WTW and 67 per cent at Mercer. Women making up 64 per cent of bottom quartile earners at Mercer and 56 per cent at WTW.
Mercer says it is working to improve the diversity in the business. It has a female CEO, a female chair of the board, and a gender balanced board and executive leadership team. It says that in 2017 promotions were nearly equally split between men and women, with the number of women promoted being slightly higher. Mercer says this strategy is an important part of how it will achieve a better gender balance in more senior roles and reach its target of having women in 30 per cent of its most senior roles by 2020. It also says in 2017 over 80 per cent of workers on maternity leave returned to work. It is currently reviewing its parental leave return process to ensure a smooth return to work and support our long-term colleague retention.
WTW said seven times as many men as women hold managing director and senior director roles. It says it has introduced a range of issues to tackle diversity in the workplace. It has started senior mentoring and coaching and will be extending this in 2018, is introducing structured sponsorship initiatives specifically aimed at better identifying the right opportunities for female colleagues in their next career move and is investing in accelerated leadership development programmes for nominated colleagues.
Willis Towers Watson Great Britain head Nicolas Aubert says: “I am not satisfied with our gender pay gap figures as they do not reflect where we aspire to be. Our pay gap is predominantly due to an under-representation of women in senior leadership roles and, as an organisation, we need to do more to address this.
“We have the opportunity, as a new company formed following a merger two years ago, to build an organisation that provides opportunities for all colleagues and leads the way in diversity. This is our aspiration, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it benefits our clients, our culture and our business.
“In some areas we have made progress, for example the Great Britain leadership team now has an even number of male and female colleagues. However, there is still much to be done to increase the representation of women across senior roles in the company and we are very determined to achieve higher representation through the initiatives we have committed to.
“We are now increasing senior leadership accountability for improving diversity within teams; we are accelerating dedicated initiatives to identify, develop and progress female talent in the business; we provide greater career support for colleagues returning to the workplace following parental leave or a career break. Indeed we are not happy with our gender pay gap as it stands and aim to see significant improvements in the near future.”
A statement from Mercer says: “At Mercer, we are fully committed to supporting all our colleagues to reach their own full potential through bringing their whole selves to work, having diverse role models and being rewarded fairly and equally. Our commitment to gender parity is evident through our EDGE certification, being on The Times UK Top 50 Employers for Women list and our extensive global research project “When Women Thrive”.
“From our extensive analysis we know our UK gender pay gap is driven primarily by having more men in higher paid roles. We see the results as a challenge to redouble our efforts to achieve better gender balance across all levels of our business. We monitor equal pay on an ongoing basis and have rigorous processes for reviewing and monitoring pay and promotions as a fundamental part of our annual compensation process.”