Gender and Disability Pay Gap

Lead Employer Organisations Gender and Disability Pay Gap Information 2021/22

The Gender Pay Gap

Despite the growing number of female students starting medical school, and an increasing female Doctor workforce, there remains a significant gender pay gap within medicine. The Independent Review into Gender Pay Gaps in Medicine in England identified that the gender pay gap in medicine was large for a single professional group and that this has been further exacerbated by the new NHS contracts for Doctors and Dentists in training, where maternity leave increments are lost.

“The gender pay gap [is] the difference in average pay rates for men and women, as a percentage of men’s earnings(1).”

Gender pay gap reporting is a statutory requirement3 for all employers who employ 250 or more employees on a specific date (the “snapshot” date), and data must be reported and published within a year of this date. This data must be collected, reported and published for each year where there are 250 or more employees within the organisation. Organisations with fewer than 250 employees on the snapshot date can still report gender pay gap information if they wish to. This year’s snapshot date is 31 March. Relevant employers must publish the following information2 , all of which is available via NHS’ Electronic Staff Record (ESR):

• Mean gender pay gap.

• Median gender pay gap.

• Mean bonus gender pay gap.

• Median bonus gender pay gap.

• Proportion of males receiving bonus payment.

• Proportion of females receiving bonus payment.

• Proportion of males and females in each quartile pay band

In addition to this, any employers who are subject to the Equality Act 2010 (gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 need to include a written statement, authorised by an ‘appropriate senior person;2, which confirms the accuracy of their calculations. As most NHS trusts fall into this category, they must therefore comply.

The Disability Pay Gap

There were fifty-one thousand disabled staff in the NHS in 2021, a number which had grown by nearly 6000 people in the space of a year, so can be expected to have grown further over the last 18 months. However, 128 NHS organisations had 5 or less disabled staff in senior manager jobs or those of pay band 8C and above4 and, although an improvement from sixteen the previous year, there are still six organisations who do not involve disabled staff in their decision making4 . This is further reflected in board representation where there are only 122 disabled board members and there are still 127 NHS organisations with no disabled board members at all.

“Disability status indicates whether the employee considers either himself or herself to be disabled, and it is classified through a categorical variable into “Yes”, “No”, and “Unknown/Not stated” categories”1 .

Considerations need to be made for the fact that disabled staff are generally much less likely to declare their disability than non-disabled colleagues and that this non-disclosure rate increases with the more senior roles and higher pay bands5.

As part of the HEEDs EDI Committee, committed to advancing diversity and inclusion across our people, influence and business we are committed to considering the gender and disability pay gap for doctors in training at a national level. To find out more information, the group has reached out to all Lead employers in England for this pay gap information relating to the financial year 2021/22.

The results are summarised below.

Table 6: *PGDiT= Post-Graduate Doctors in Training **Exempt from statutory requirement to report Gender Pay Gap Data ***Data provided suggests information request misunderstood

Conclusions

Analysis of this data is limited by the small volume of responses received; this may be due to a short timeframe for providing the information and/or due to a lack of readily available information within Lead Employer Organisations. (LEOs)

The gender pay gap in medicine for hospital doctors is 18.9%, 15.3% for GPs and 11.5% for clinical academics; the information provided from The Royal Free hospital suggests their gender pay gap is actually in favour of women, at -0.36%.

The median disability pay gap in the UK as of 2021 was 13.8%, having increased from 11.7% in 20146 . There is existing data to suggest NHS organisations are performing slightly better than this national average, with NHS Digital’s median disability pay gap of 6.9%5 , however the published data in this remit is still very limited.

It is not possible to draw reliable conclusions on the disability pay gap for LEOs in England from the data provide above.

Another data collection exercise will be completed in 2023/24.

Recommendations

Supporting staff in the face of challenging behaviours and discrimination is an ongoing system challenge and we continue to think about how best to support our learners. Actions to support this will include:

• All Postgraduate Deans to consider and share any existing initiatives as part of sharing good practice.

• Continued system engagement for plans and responses to the challenge of patient discrimination.

• Consideration of existing education tools and resources.

General Pay Gap Reporting (applicable to both Gender and Disability pay gap reporting)

It is recommended that all LEOs should:

• Undertake an equality analysis of the workforce profile and organisational leadership annually.

• Continue to develop and promote flexible working options (e.g., Less than full time training, Out of programme pause, flexible portfolio training) and workforce strategies to improve recruitment and retention of staff, including supporting staff to return to work following paternal or adoption leave (eg. SuppoRTT), and facilitating payment for workplace adjustments from central (rather than local) budget.

• Incorporate unconscious bias training into recruitment and selection training, and ensure this is delivered periodically throughout the year, in addition to the new-starter induction e-learning.

Gender Pay Gap Reporting

In order to comply with statutory requirements, all LEOs who employ 250 or more employees on the “snapshot” date must:

• Collect and submit the following information for Gender Pay gap return reporting.

• Mean gender pay gap.

• Median gender pay gap.

• Mean bonus gender pay gap.

• Median bonus gender pay gap.

• Proportion of males receiving bonus payment.

• Proportion of females receiving bonus payment.

• Proportion of males and females in each quartile pay band.

• If subject to the Equality Act 2010 (gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, also include a written statement, authorised by an ‘appropriate senior person; confirming the accuracy of their calculations.

It is recommended that all LEOs should:

• Where a gender pay gap is identified, adopt a suitable gender pay gap action plan which can be published annually with gender pay gap reporting.

• This can be via the involvement of EDI steering / working groups to help monitor actions.

• Support further development of female leaders through local / regional /national leadership development programmes.

Disability Pay Gap Reporting

It is recommended that all LEOs should:

• Ensure all staff understand how to report their disability on ESR.

• Explore ways to collect information on the barriers to declaring disability status.

• Dedicate a certain amount of money from the central budget specifically for workplace adjustments for staff living with a disability; ensure this is expanded not only to once they are employed, but also to the recruitment and interview process.

• Consider signing up to the Disability Confident Scheme7 for further guidance on the standards that need to be met and how to follow them.

References:

1 Mend the Gap: The Independent Review into Gender Pay Gaps in Medicine in England

2 Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust – Gender Pay Gap Report 2021

3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/genderpay-gap-reporting-guida...

4 A report on the Workforce Disability Equality Standard for NHS staff

5 Our pay gaps – NHS Digital 6 Disability pay gaps in the UK: 2021 7 How to sign up to the Disability Confident employer scheme – GOV.UK