Hot TopicsEdinburgh: The Gender Pay Gap – What Have We Learned 5 Months On?
Event overview
Bookings are closed for this event.
Gender pay and progression tend to go hand in hand, so what does the Gender Pay Gap mean for all of us? The Gender Pay Gap is often wrongly construed as being about equal pay. It is not. It is about ‘where women are in the organisation’ in terms of higher and lower paid roles.
It is recognised that the current format for the gender pay gap is a very blunt instrument that needs to be supported by more narrative and a finer breakdown of categories to reveal useful learning that can lead to actual change. The issues that need to be addressed to reduce the gender pay gap involve developing equal representation of women and men at all levels and there are complex social, cultural and organisational factors at play.
Our two panellists will give some insights from their own experiences in developing the Gender Pay Gap report at their respective organisations and the story of how they have responded to the call for more women at the top. SSE started gender pay gap reporting two years ahead of the deadline and are leading the way in making meaningful changes that promote inclusion and demonstrating the valuable benefits inclusion brings to the organisation and individuals.
Some of the topics the panel will address include:
- What have the Gender Pay Gap stats really told us? What are the insights and what are we doing about it?
- What is the impact for women in the industry and how can it inform how to think about your career?
- What are the benefits of having more women at the top?
- What are the motivators for women at senior levels and what stops women getting to the top?
- Should there be targets or quotas?
- Should there be women only senior leadership development programmes?
- Should men be more involved in diversity and inclusion activities?
- What should we do differently now?
Timings:
17:30 Drinks on arrival
18:00 Panel event
20:00 Close
The Panel:
Heather Inglis - Diversity and inclusion manager, Standard Life Aberdeen
Heather has created the Standard Life global diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy and designs and delivers the operational plan to implement it. She has been involved in Gender Pay Gap and Shared Parental leave consultations at the Scottish Government and with leadership groups. She is one of the founders of the D&I Network in Scotland, which supports organisations to learn from each other and share best practice in the inclusion and diversity space.
Gender pay gap report:
Gender action plan (last year’s as we will publish this years early Oct):
Inclusion vision:
Rosie MacRae - Head of Inclusion and Diversity, SSE
In the last four years, Rosie has helped shape SSE’s Inclusion & Diversity strategy. Strides have been made at SSE with gender diversity: Gender pay gap reporting was published 2 years ahead of the legislative requirements, the ground breaking sponsoring of the Women’s FA Cup and more than doubling SSE’s female engineering graduate intake. This demonstration of strong gender disclosures and best-in-class policies and practices has led to SSE now included as one of the 104 global companies listed in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index.
Last year new research was carried out with Inclusion & Diversity experts Equal Approach to calculate SSE’s financial return on Inclusion. SSE learnt that the efforts in Gender Diversity have brought a £4.52 return for every £1 spent. There is now a clear strategy in place to increase this return to £15 per £1 spent by focusing less on specific diversity characteristics and more on building a truly inclusive culture.
Read the reports on the fiscal return on investment in gender diversity (return on inclusion): http://sse.com/media/481527/DiversityReport_FINAL.pdf
Latest update on Gender pay gap (Page 36/37): http://sse.com/media/522476/SSE-plc-Sustainability-Report-2018.pdf
Parking at Venue: TBC