230630ResourcesCtteePaper3EqualPayAudit2023

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 30 June 2023

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For dis­cus­sion

Title: Equal Pay Audit 2023 Pre­pared by: Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development

Pip Mackie, Human Resources Manager

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. High­lights: • The gender pay gap for 2023 was 9.55%, lower than the Gender Pay Gap in Scot­land of 10.1%, and lower that our pay gap in 2022, which was 12.49%. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is 2.92%, which is also not­ably lower than the Scot­tish Medi­an Pay Gap of 11.5%. The Authority’s Gender Pay Gap has been on the down­ward tra­ject­ory for the last 6 years, so this is encour­aging to see that the pay gap is now lower than the nation­al aver­age, the work to reduce the pay gap is clearly hav­ing an impact. • The gender pay gap for full-time staff is 13.78%, which is an improve­ment on the 2022 fig­ure of 14.64%. • For part time staff the gender pay gap is ‑14.16%, which again is an improve­ment on the 2022 fig­ure of 1.23%. • The female aver­age salary is high­er than the male in some grades (bands C and D); • Band D, the largest band, with 39 staff, com­pris­ing 25 female staff and 14 male staff has a gender pay gap of ‑3.77%. • Band C has a pay gap of ‑4.06%, this is an improve­ment on the 2022 fig­ure of — 2.36%. • The middle man­age­ment grade E has a gender pay gap of 0.33%, which is an improve­ment on 2022, when it was 2.20%.
2. Shad­ows: — • Of the lower graded bands A to C, band B has a pay gap of 2.28% and B1 is 0.58%, this is a slight deteri­or­a­tion from 2022 when the pay gap was zero. • Of the 30 man­age­ment posts (bands E to G + CEO), 12 (40% are female) in com­par­is­on to 10 out of 26 posts (45%) in 2022. There are more women in senior

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 30 June 2023

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man­age­ment, but the fig­ures bely this as there are also more seni­or man­age­ment posts than pre­vi­ously. • The highest paid grade (band G) com­prises only male staff. • The seni­or man­age­ment team (bands F, G and CEO) of 11 man­agers com­prises only three females. How­ever, there were only two females at this time in 2022, so this does also rep­res­ent a small improvement .

Back­ground

1. An equal pay audit is designed to assess pay levels across the organ­isa­tion in terms of gender equal­ity. It should scru­tin­ise all aspects of pay includ­ing pro­files of the dif­fer­ent grades and dir­ect­or­ates across the organ­isa­tion, as well as recruit­ment and pro­mo­tion in order to high­light any areas where dir­ect or indir­ect dis­crim­in­a­tion may be impact­ing on pay equal­ity. The CNPA is com­mit­ted to con­duct­ing an equal pay audit as part of its approach to equal­it­ies, and we assess pay for gender equal­ity on an ongo­ing basis.

2. The CNPA has a robust and object­ive job eval­u­ation sys­tem which is designed to elim­in­ate all ele­ments of poten­tial dis­crim­in­a­tion in the grad­ing of dif­fer­ent jobs, but it is import­ant that our pro­cesses are scru­tin­ised to ensure that inequal­it­ies are not allowed to devel­op inad­vert­ently. There may be socio-demo­graph­ic reas­ons behind dif­fer­ences in pay or vari­ations in num­bers of male or female staff at dif­fer­ent grades with­in the organ­isa­tion which acts to skew some res­ults, but it is not suf­fi­cient to assume that this is the case. Hence we under­take a detailed review to seek to under­stand our equal pay pos­i­tion as fully as possible.

3. This equal pay audit was con­duc­ted using the salary levels and staff num­bers as at 31 March 2023.

4. There are two meas­ures of pay gap which we are required to report on mean and medi­an. The mean (sum of hourly rates of pay divided by the num­ber of staff) includes the highest and low­est rates of pay. The medi­an (the mid­point of the employee’s hourly rates of pay) is not skewed by very low or very high hourly rates of pay, and poten­tially gives a more accur­ate rep­res­ent­a­tion of typ­ic­al dif­fer­ence, but it can obscure gendered pay dif­fer­ences. Guid­ance there­fore sug­gests that pref­er­ence should be giv­en to the mean, as it gives a deep­er under­stand­ing of any pay gaps. Our cal­cu­la­tions across the board are based on the mean aver­age. For the over­all gender pay gap fig­ure, we have also used the medi­an calculation.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 30 June 2023

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1. We have ana­lysed the pay gap across full and part time staff; across grades; across dir­ect­or­ates; and then as an over­all assess­ment, as follows:

Gender Pay Gap Res­ults for Full-time and Part-time staff.

1. Of our total 79 staff who work full time, 46% are women, in com­par­is­on with 54% who are men. The full-time pay gap across the entire organ­isa­tion (com­par­ing women’s full-time aver­age hourly pay with men’s full-time aver­age hourly pay) is 13.78%. This is an improve­ment on last year’s fig­ure, which was 14.64% but this fig­ure is above Scot­tish aver­age for full-time staff in 2022 which is 6.6%*. Our ana­lys­is of these fig­ures is as fol­lows: Of the 36 full-time female staff, 47% are in the lower graded/​paid bands A – C; 36% are in the middle paid range (band D); and 17% are in the high­er graded/​paid bands (E‑G). Of the 43 full-time male staff, 33% are in the lower paid bands; 26% are in the middle range, and 41% are in the high­er bands. Whilst the major­ity of male full time posts are in grades that are at the high­er end of the salary scale, there has been a slight reduc­tion in the female full-time posts posi­tioned in the grades that are at the high­er range of the salary scale.

2. 84% of the organ­isa­tions’ part-time staff are female, and 16% are male. The aver­age part-time female salary is £19.27, which is high­er than the aver­age male part-time salary of £16.88, mak­ing the gender pay gap for part-time staff ‑14.16%. This is a sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment on the 2022 fig­ure, which has the part-time gender pay gap at 1.23%. Of the lower graded posts bands A – C, there are 2 part-time male mem­bers of staff, but 8 part-time female staff; at the middle band D range, there are 12 part-time female staff, and 3 male; and at the high­er salary bands E‑F, 6 are female and none are male. There are more female part-time staff with a spread over the salary bands.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Aver­age Hourly Salary Com­par­is­on Full Time Vs Part Time (FTE Figues) £22.00 £20.96 £21.00 £20.00 £19.64 £19.27 £18.89 £19.00 £18.07 £18.00 £16.88 £17.00 £16.00 £15.00 Full Time Part Time ■ Av Female Av Male Average

Num­bers of Male and Female Staff in Full Time or Part Time Work 90 80 70 60 50 43 36 40 30 20 10 79 26 5 Full Time Part Time Female Male Total 31

Res­ults by Grade

1. The Equal Pay Audit found that there were vari­ances in salary aver­age between male and female across the grades, with the female aver­age high­er than the male in some grades (bands C & D); and lower than the male aver­age in all oth­er grades (bands A, B, B1, C1, E & F). Band A has an equal num­ber of male and female staff and bands B, B1, C1 & F com­prise more male than females. Band E has the same num­ber of male and female staff. 1 grade com­prises only male staff (band G), which includes the highest paid staff.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 30 June 2023

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1. Of the 33 staff in the lower graded bands A to C, 23 are female. There is a 2.28% pay gap at band B, 0.58% at Band B1, 3.08% at band C1 and a ‑4.06% pay gap at band C.

2. Band D is the largest band, with 39 staff, com­pris­ing 25 female staff and 14 male staff. This is a Policy Officer level of grade/​pay. The gender pay gap for this grade is ‑3.77%. 4 of the male staff are cur­rently at the top of the salary band, all of whom hav­ing been with the organ­isa­tion for at least 6 years, whilst 11 of the female staff are at the top of their bands.

3. It should be noted that of the 30 man­age­ment posts (bands E to G + CEO), 12 (40%) are female in com­par­is­on to 45% in 2022, 32% in 2021, 33% in 2020, 37% in 2019 and just 25% in 2017. Although this rep­res­ents a slight per­cent­age reduc­tion for female staff in man­age­ment posts, it should be noted that there has been an over­all increase in the num­ber of posts at this level. Des­pite the fact that the major­ity (75%) of seni­or man­age­ment roles (F, G and CEO) are held by male staff, this is an improve­ment on the 2022 fig­ure which was 85%. At the middle man­age­ment level band E, there are equal num­bers of male and female staff, with a pay gap of 0.33%. The pay gap in this band has improved on the 2022 fig­ure of 2.20%, 4.65% in 2021 and 6.9% in 2020.

4. Des­pite evid­ence nation­ally of jour­ney times hav­ing some dis­crim­in­a­tion against female staff, the CNPA’s policies have countered this to date and there is no evid­ence of this issue with­in the Authority.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Aver­age Hourly Salary by Salary Band 40.00 35.00 33.47 33.47 30.00 26.0226.5226.33 25.00 22.472.5522.51 18.79 19.50 20.00 19.25 15.22 16.89 17.25 15.00 30 June 2023 Page 6 of 12 15.84 15.78 14.21 13.65 14.12 14.17 13.34 13.57 13.14 12.04 10.94 10.00 5.00

Band G Band F Band E Band D Band C1 Band C Band B1 Band B Band A ■Female ■Male ■Aver­age

Num­bers of Male and Female Staff by Salary Band 30 25 25 20 17 14 15 99 10 5 5 3 3 6 4 4 2 2 3 1 11

Band G Band F Band E Band D Band C1 Band C Band B1 Band B Band A ■Female ■Male

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Res­ults by Directorate

1. An ana­lys­is of the salary levels by Dir­ect­or­ate across the organ­isa­tion showed that the aver­age female salary was lower than the aver­age male salary in all Dir­ect­or­ates. Much of this dif­fer­ence appears to be due to the high­er levels of female staff at admin or sup­port officer levels with­in the Dir­ect­or­ates, com­bined with sig­ni­fic­antly more males than females at the high­er paid bands F and G across the organ­isa­tion. How­ever, the res­ults of the ana­lys­is of pay by grade will also play into this pos­i­tion. We have iden­ti­fied above that there are gradu­ally increas­ing num­bers of females in middle man­age­ment grades. As these mem­bers of staff are rel­at­ively new to the grade, they are still at an early stage of their jour­ney times through salary grade. Con­sequently, there is a time lag in these pos­it­ive improve­ments in gender bal­ance show­ing into the ana­lys­is of salar­ies by grade and by their respect­ive directorates.

£30.00 Aver­age Hourly Salary by Dir­ect­or­ate £25.00 22.92 20.28 £20.00 18.68 18.97 18.20 19.34 19.41 19.34 £15.00 26.89 £10.00 £5.00 f- Female Male Aver­age CS & Comms N&CC P&P

Cairngorms Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Dir­ect­or­ate Gender:

Num­ber of Female and Male Staff by Dir­ect­or­ate 25.00 23 23 20 20.00 16 14 14 15.00 10.00 5.00

CS & Comms N&CC P&P ■Female ■Male

Over­all Organ­isa­tion­al Results

1. Across the organ­isa­tion as a whole, there are 62 female staff and 48 male staff SO female staff make up 56% of the work­force. This fig­ure has stayed the same as
2. The over­all aver­age male hourly salary is £20.54 and the over­all aver­age female salary is £18.58 (the aver­age hourly salary across the organ­isa­tion is £19.43). This makes the mean gender pay gap (i.e. the dif­fer­ence in aver­age hourly earn­ings between men and women) 9.55% (and lower at 6.97% if you removed the CEO from the cal­cu­la­tions). This fig­ure is an improve­ment and is now below the 2023 Scot­tish Gender Pay Gap (2021) of 10.1%*, it is show­ing a con­tin­ued decreas­ing tra­ject­ory, once again being down on the CNPA’s 2022 Gender Pay Gap of 12.49%, the 2021 fig­ure of 17.44%, the 2020 fig­ure of 17.92%, the 2019 fig­ure of 19.25%, the 2018 fig­ure of 20.20%, the 2017 fig­ure of 21.47%, and the 2015 fig­ure of 23.64%. The gender pay gap res­ult there­fore high­lights an ongo­ing pos­it­ive trend in the Authority’s prac­tices suc­cess­fully nar­row­ing the gender pay gap on this meas­ure with a reduc­tion in gender pay gap annu­ally over the last 8 years. The fore­go­ing ana­lys­is, high­light­ing an increase in female staff at policy officer and middle man­ager salary grades with­in the organ­isa­tion at early stages in their jour­ney times through salary bands also lays a good found­a­tion for fur­ther reduc­tions in gender pay gap in sub­sequent years.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Mean Gender Pay Gap (Per­cent­age) 25 21.47 20.21 19.25 20 17.92 17.44 15 10 5 12.49 9.55 0 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

1. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is lower at 2.92%. How­ever, this is an increase on the 2022 fig­ure of ‑5.47%, but a reduc­tion on the 2021 fig­ure of 5.9%, the 2020 fig­ure of 10%, the 2019 fig­ure of 15.25%, and on the 2017 fig­ure of 15.87%. This fig­ure is also sig­ni­fic­antly lower than the 2021 Scot­tish Medi­an Pay Gap (2021) of 11.5%.

2. This can be explained by the fol­low­ing: a) There were more male appoint­ments to the lower graded band B — C posts than before – band B now has 3 male staff and 1 female, band B1 has 4 male and 6 female staff and band C1 has 4 male and 2 female. b) In the last 12 months, a fur­ther band F Seni­or Man­ager vacancy was appoin­ted to a female, thereby increas­ing the num­ber of females in this high­er paid band to three. c) As part of our com­mit­ment to our Equal­ity Out­comes regard­ing improv­ing the diversity of our staff makeup and increas­ing the num­ber of women at seni­or pos­i­tions, we have con­tin­ued to take the fol­low­ing actions: i. At recruit­ment we have reduced the num­ber of essen­tial cri­ter­ia to ensure those that remain are indeed essen­tial (research has indic­ated that women are less likely to apply for pos­i­tions if they do not meet ALL the essen­tial cri­ter­ia), All job descrip­tions have to be approved by the HR team, who will robustly chal­lenge the per­cep­tion of the neces­sity for each essen­tial cri­terion; ii. Most posts are now advert­ised with the poten­tial of being part time or job share. iii. All recruit­ment pan­els con­tain male and female members;

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iv. Recruit­ment advert­ising has been revamped to high­light the bene­fits of flex­ible work­ing. V. Recruit­ment advert­ising places looked at to encour­age applic­ant diversity. vi. There is more joined up recruit­ment with sim­il­ar pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions and we are sup­port­ive when pos­sible of second­ment oppor­tun­it­ies. vii. We removed core hours and improved remote access­ib­il­ity to IT facil­it­ies. viii. Ongo­ing review of organ­isa­tion­al struc­ture with more policy pos­i­tions being developed at lower grades, which were tra­di­tion­ally where only ​“admin” roles, more heav­ily slanted towards women were graded. There are now more male staff in lower graded post than there have been historically.

Aver­age Hourly Salary Whole Organ­isa­tion 21 £20.54 21 20 £19.43 20 19 £18.58 19 18 18

Av Female Av Male Average

Over­time

1. Over­time is paid only in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances and makes up a small ele­ment of the pay bill.

Recruit­ment Stat­ist­ics (Janu­ary to Decem­ber 2022)

1. In 2022 a total of 34 posts were advert­ised, with 31 posts recruited. The major­ity of posts were advert­ised intern­ally in the first instance. 3 posts were not appointed.

2. There were 26 intern­al applic­ants with 12 intern­al appoint­ments. Of the 26 applic­ants, 14 were female, 11 were male and 1 pre­ferred not to say and of the intern­al appoint­ments 4 were female, 7 were male and 1 pre­ferred not to say.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. In 2022, of a total of 244 extern­al applic­ants there were 100 (41%) male applic­ants and 138 (57%) female, with 6 not dis­clos­ing. Of the 19 posts appoin­ted through the extern­al round, 8 (42%) were male and 11 (58%) female.

2. So, look­ing at over­all totals, there were slightly more female applic­ants (152) than male (107). How­ever, the num­ber of female to male applic­ants appoin­ted was the same, female 15 (48%), male 15 (48%), with 1 per­son pre­fer­ring not to say.

Con­clu­sions from the Audit

1. CNPA jobs are eval­u­ated to determ­ine which band they should be placed in, and most staff start at the bot­tom of the band, pro­gress­ing by annu­al pro­gres­sion awards to the top of the scale. The poten­tial for all forms of inequal­ity is thus reduced by the fact that jobs are object­ively eval­u­ated and salar­ies alloc­ated accord­ing to the job con­tent rather than the per­son. There is still poten­tial for inequal­ity with­in eval­u­ation sys­tems, such as the weight­ing giv­en to par­tic­u­lar types of work – for example caring tasks have often attrac­ted a lower weight­ing than manu­al labour in the past, which indir­ectly favours more men than women. The CNPA eval­u­ation sys­tem has been designed and equal­ity impact assessed to ensure this type of dis­crim­in­a­tion does not hap­pen with­in Cairngorms NPA.

2. The CNPA has a num­ber of policies designed to ensure that male and female mem­bers of staff have equal access to career pro­gres­sion. Male and female staff are giv­en sup­port in man­aging child­care com­mit­ments and oth­er work life bal­ance issues to enable them to work effect­ively at any level of the organ­isa­tion. We have a range of part time, job-share and ad-hoc work­ing from home arrange­ments which have been accessed equally by men and women across the organ­isa­tion. More part time or job share roles at the high­er band E have been appoin­ted, which shows that we are suc­cess­fully chal­len­ging the organ­isa­tion­al cul­tur­al per­cep­tion that posts can­not be delivered at that level in part time hours.

3. The gender pay gap is improv­ing, and we are start­ing to see the impact of the inter­ven­tions imple­men­ted to sup­port the Equal­ity Out­comes of ensur­ing there is a gender bal­ance in the seni­or pos­i­tions. How­ever, we can­not become com­pla­cent, and recog­nise that con­tin­ued work and mon­it­or­ing must be an organ­isa­tion­al pri­or­ity going for­ward. The Equal­ity and Advis­ory For­um will play a key role in scru­tin­ising, chal­len­ging and sup­port­ing this action.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

*Close the Gap Work­ing Paper (2022) Gender Pay Gap data for 2021 Kate Christie Pip Mack­ie katechristie@​cairngorms.​co.​uk pipmackie@​cairngorms.​co.​uk Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 30 June 2023 Page 12 of 12