Pay gap report

We have a legal duty to report our gender pay gap information every year. We have decided to also publish our disability and ethnicity pay gaps.

Our gender pay gap

Scope’s gender pay gap, as of 5 April 2024, is 9.88%.

Although there is still a gap, we are committed to addressing it. This represents a good improvement since 2019 when the mean gender pay gap was 29.7%.

How gender pay gap is calculated

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women across the organisation on a given date. Which is determined by the government (5 April each year).

There are 2 ways that the average hourly pay is calculated to give the percentage pay gap.

The mean: we add together all the hourly pay rates that women receive and divide by the number of women in the workforce. This is repeated for men. The difference between these figures is the mean.

The median: we sort all the hourly rates of pay for women from lowest to highest and take the hourly rate in the middle of the list. This is repeated for men. The difference between these figures is the median.

How gender pay gap is reported

The pay gaps are reported as a percentage. This percentage is the difference between the earnings of men and women across the organisation.

The larger the percentage the greater the gap. If the percentage is negative, it means that the gap is in favour of women.

The law requires the calculations to be based on our payroll data. We are legally required to use the gender that we report to HMRC. The HMRC system will only allow people to be registered by their legal gender, with the options "male" and "female". For other purposes, we monitor people’s gender identity.

The table below shows our gender pay gap from 2019 onwards.

Bonus pay gap

We stopped giving bonuses in 2021, so we no longer have a bonus pay gap.

The table below shows our bonus pay gap from 2019 to 2020.

Actions we have taken

We have committed to improve our gender pay gap by making sure we continue to offer fair pay no matter someone’s gender.

When hiring new roles, we carefully reviewed the pay to line up with our new Reward principles.

In January 2023, we launched a new 3-year Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy.

We have also seen a significant increase in internal moves and promotions. This was because we had a recruitment pause during most of the financial year.

Although this year we have not achieved as many of our specific actions as in previous years, we have continued to see the pay gap fall. We believe that this is due to

• the continued adherence to our Reward approach, 
• our focus on internal recruitment
• regular measurement and communication of our figures across Scope.

The new colleague forum and our Colleague Networks have discussed initiatives to support women in their careers.

They were particularly keen to see:

• Learning and development opportunities clearly available for part-time colleagues.
• Development and launch of Menopause, Carers’ and time off for fertility treatment policies.

We have monitored the introduction of anonymous applications and the simplified application form.

There has been a delay on launching our secondment policy. However, due to the recruitment pause in place for most of 2023 to 2024, colleagues have been moving internally far more than previously. The policy is currently out for consultation.

Actions going forward

• Maintain the current pay principles. This includes rigorous scrutiny of all requests for salary increases and new positions. 
• Continuously benchmark all roles against external market data. This ensures fair and competitive pay structures Also continue verifying internal alignment with our other roles and structures. 
• Heighten the emphasis on promoting colleagues within Scope: 
  • Finalise and communicate the internal movers and secondment policy and procedures. This can support career progression across Scope.
  • Encourage colleagues to complete My Review and identify development opportunities. 
  • Encourage all colleagues to participate in the Talent Audit. 
  • Encourage women to investigate development. Particularly into traditionally male dominated areas such as technology, data and digital. 
• Develop and launch policies to support women at work. These include a new Menopause policy and Carers’ policy.
• Collaborate with our Colleague Forum and networks to generate ideas on further reducing the gender pay gap. 

Our disability pay gap

Our disability pay gap is: -4.03%

The disability pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of non-disabled colleagues and disabled colleagues across the organisation on a given date.

Colleagues who marked “prefer not to say” or “not known” were not counted in the calculation.

Our pay gap remains in favour of disabled colleagues.

Our ethnicity pay gap

Our ethnicity pay gap is: -1.19%

The ethnicity pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of White colleagues and Black, Asian and Ethnic minority colleagues across the organisation on a given date.

Colleagues who marked “prefer not to say” or “not known” were not counted in the calculation.