240809Paper2ResourcesCttee2024EqualPayAuditv02

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Equal Pay Audit 2024

Pre­pared by: Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment and Pip Mack­ie, Human Resources Manager

Exec­ut­ive summary

1. Across the organ­isa­tion as a whole, there are 64 female staff and 48 male staff SO female staff make up 57% of the work­force. The over­all aver­age male hourly salary is £23.28, and the over­all aver­age female salary is £20.22 (the aver­age hourly salary across the organ­isa­tion is £21.53). This makes the mean gender pay gap 13.14%. This fig­ure is high­er than the Park Authority’s 2023 Gender Pay Gap of 9.55%, as well as the 2022 fig­ure of 12.49%, but rep­res­ents an improve­ment on the fig­ures in 2021 of 17.44%, 2020 of 17.92%, 2019 of 19.25%, 2018 of 20.20%, 2017 of 21.47%, and 2015 of 23.64%. This fig­ure includes the CEO’s pay. If we remove the CEO hourly pay, the mean gender pay gap is 10.93%.

2. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is 4.55%. We do not have updated data for the mean Scot­tish pay gap, but stat­ist­ics from the Office of Nation­al Stat­ist­ics Sur­vey of Hours and Earn­ings 2023 (Novem­ber 2023) provides data on the medi­an pay gap in Scot­land, which is of 8.7%. So, the Park Authority’s medi­an pay gap is lower than the Scot­tish medi­an pay gap, and also lower than the UK fig­ure of 14.3%.

Back­ground

1. An equal pay audit is designed to 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. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (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. 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

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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.

1. The gender pay gap is the dif­fer­ence between women’s and men’s aver­age earn­ings. It is a com­plex issue and there is no defin­it­ive way in which to report a single fig­ure which fully cap­tures those com­plex­it­ies. There are typ­ic­ally two dif­fer­ent meth­ods to cal­cu­late the pay gap: a) The medi­an aver­age gender pay gap is cal­cu­lated by find­ing the mid­point in all employ­ees’ hourly pay and dis­card­ing the low­est and highest rates of pay – such that half of the employ­ees’ earn­ing will be above and the oth­er half below the mid-point. The medi­an is there­fore not skewed by very low hourly pay of very high hourly pay. How­ever, as typ­ic­ally men account for the major­ity of those with very high rates of pay and women account for the major­ity of those with very low rates of pay, the medi­an can obscure some gendered dif­fer­ences. b) The mean aver­age gender pay gap is cal­cu­lated by adding all employ­ees’ rates of pay togeth­er and divid­ing by the total num­ber of employ­ees. It there­fore includes the low­est and highest hourly rates of pay. Inter­na­tion­al meas­ure use the mean when cal­cu­lat­ing the pay gap which enables com­par­is­ons to be made with oth­er coun­tries. Guid­ance sug­gests that pref­er­ence should be giv­en to the mean, as it gives a deep­er under­stand­ing of any pay gaps. This paper is based on the mean for the cal­cu­la­tions across grade and dir­ect­or­ate, but we have also provided the medi­an fig­ure for the over­all pay gap.

2. Pay data of all staff in post on 30 March 2024 informed the gender pay gap calculation.

Gender pay gap res­ults for full-time and part-time staff

1. Of our total 79 staff who work full time, 35 are women, in com­par­is­on with 44 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 14.41%. This is worse than last year’s fig­ure, which was 13.78%. Of the 35 full-time female staff, 46% are in the lower graded / paid bands (A – C); 34% are in band D; and 20% are in the high­er graded / paid bands (E — G). Of the 44 full-time male staff, 34% are in the lower paid bands; 27% are in band D; and 39% are in the high­er bands. So, the

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major­ity of full-time male staff are at the high­er paid bands, where the major­ity of full-time female staff are in the lower paid bands.

1. 33 staff work part-time. 29 of the organ­isa­tions’ part-time staff are female, and four are male. The aver­age part-time female salary hourly rate is £20.40, which is lower than the aver­age male part-time salary of £21.37, mak­ing the gender pay gap for part-time staff 4.52%, which is worse than last year’s fig­ure which was ‑14.16 (as a neg­at­ive num­ber, the gender pay gap indic­ates that male staff are paid lower than female staff in that grade). Of the lower graded posts bands A – C, there is one part- time male mem­ber of staff, but 10 part-time female staff; at the middle band D range, there are 14 part-time female staff, and 2 males; and at the high­er salary bands E — F, five are female and one is male. There are more female part-time staff with a spread over the salary bands.

Aver­age Hourly Salary Com­par­is­on Full Time Vs Part Time (FTE Fig­ures) £24.00 £23.45 £23.00 £22.00 £21.95 £21.00 £20.07 £20.00 £19.00 £18.00 £21.37 £20.40 £20.52

Full Time Part Time Av Female Av Male Average

Num­bers of Male and Female Staff Full Time or Part Time Work 90 79 80 70 60 50 44 35 40 29 30 20 10 4 0 33

Full Time Part Time Female Male Total

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Res­ults by Grade

1. When someone is newly appoin­ted to a role, they are typ­ic­ally appoin­ted on the band min­im­um. Jour­ney times are four years for staff at bands A and B, and 6 years for staff in bands C – G. Pay vari­ances can there­fore depend on length of ser­vice in a grade.

2. 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 B1, C, D); and lower than the male aver­age in oth­er grades (bands C1, E, F). There is no vari­ance in salar­ies for male and female in Band B. There are no females at the highest paid band G.

3. Of the 36 staff in the lower graded bands A to C, 24 are female. There is a 15.99% pay gap at Band A, no pay gap at band B, ‑0.30% at Band B1, ‑4.05% at band C and 2.55% at band C1. Pay gap at band A is high, but this is due to the fact that of the four staff at this band, there is one male who due to length of ser­vice is near the band max, but there are three female staff, two newly appoin­ted and there­fore at the band min­im­um, and one with just over one years’ ser­vice and there­fore near the band min.

4. Band D is the largest band, with 40 staff, com­pris­ing 26 female staff and 14 male staff. This is a Policy Officer level of grade/​pay. The gender pay gap for this grade is 2.44%.

5. Band E has nine female and nine male staff. Three of the male staff are on the band max, with one of the female staff on the max. The pay gap is 1.29%.

6. It should be noted that of the 30 man­age­ment posts (bands E to G and CEO), 12 (40%) are female (this is unchanged from last year) This rep­res­ents a stat­ic pos­i­tion for female staff in man­age­ment posts. There has been some move­ment in these bands, which has involved male staff. The major­ity (75%) of seni­or man­age­ment roles (F, G and CEO) are held by male staff, and this fig­ure also remains the same as in 2023.

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

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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.

Aver­age Hourly Salary by Dir­ect­or­ate 30.00 25.58 25.00 22.19 21.76 22.31 22.03 21.94 20.02 19.73 20.67 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 0.00

CS & Comms N&CC P&P Female Male Average

Num­ber of Female and Male Staff by Dir­ect­or­ate 30 25 25 20 16 15 12 12 10 5 27 0 CS & Comms N&CC P&P Female Male 20

Over­all Organ­isa­tion­al Results

1. Across the organ­isa­tion as a whole, there are 64 female staff and 48 male staff, so female staff make up 57% of the work­force. The over­all aver­age male hourly salary is £23.28 and the over­all aver­age female salary is £20.22 (the aver­age hourly salary across the organ­isa­tion is £21.53). This makes the mean gender pay gap 13.12% (and lower at 10.93% if you removed the CEO from the cal­cu­la­tions). This fig­ure is

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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high­er than the 2023 fig­ure of 9.55%, and the 2022 of 12.49%, but lower than the pre­ced­ing 5 years (2021 of 17.44%, 2020 of 17.92%, 2019 of 19.25%, 2018 of 20.20%, 2017 of 21.47%, and 2015 of 23.64%. The gender pay gap res­ult whilst an increase on the pre­vi­ous two years, does show an ongo­ing over­all down­ward trend, with a 10% reduc­tion in gender pay gap since 2015.

1. If we use the medi­an meth­od­o­logy to cal­cu­late the Gender Pay Gap, the fig­ure is 4.55%. This is an increase on the fig­ures from 2023 of 2.92% and 2022 of ‑5.47%, but a reduc­tion on the 2021 fig­ure of 5.9%, 2020 of 10%, 2019 of 15.25%, and 2017 of 15.87%. This fig­ure is also sig­ni­fic­antly lower than the 2023 Scot­tish Medi­an Pay Gap of 8.7%, and the UK medi­an pay gap of 14.3%.

Mean Gender Pay Gap (Per­cent­age) 25 21.47 20.21 19.25 20 17.92 17.44 15 10 5 13.12 12.49 9.55 0 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Aver­age Hourly Salary Whole Organ­isa­tion 24.00 23.50 £23.28 23.00 22.50 22.00 21.50 21.00 20.50 £20.22 20.00 19.50 19.00 18.50 Av Female Av Male Aver­age £21.53

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1. The stat­ist­ics sug­gest a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in the mean pay gap gen­er­ally. But the ana­lys­is of the data presen­ted in the table below actu­ally high­lights that the gender pay gap is neg­at­ive across three grades – ie, female hourly rate is high­er than the male hourly rate. There is a mar­gin­al pay gap at bands C1, E and F, where the male hourly rate is slightly high­er than the female rate, with an increas­ing pay gap at band A. How­ever, at band G pay, rep­res­ent­ing the highest paid staff there are no female staff at this grade. As such, giv­en there are no com­par­at­ors to draw on there is no stat­ist­ic­al pay gap at this grade, but when the grade is included in the total organ­isa­tion­al pay gap, it has the effect of dis­tort­ing the over­all gender pay gap, and actu­ally masks the fact that across all oth­er pay bands, the organ­isa­tion is doing pretty well.

²⁰²³⁄₂₄ Grade Pay gap A 15.99% B 0% B1 ‑0.30% C ‑4.05 C1 2.55% D ‑2.55% E 1.29% F 3.48%

Recruit­ment Stat­ist­ics (Janu­ary to Decem­ber 2023)

1. In 2023, a total of 26 roles (37 posts) were advert­ised, with 30 posts recruited. The major­ity of posts were advert­ised intern­ally in the first instance. Two posts were not appoin­ted, with five of the posts being appoin­ted in 2024.

2. There were 19 intern­al applic­ants with 12 intern­al appoint­ments. Of the 19 applic­ants, eight were female, 11 were male and of the intern­al appoint­ments four were female and eight were male.

3. In 2023, of a total of 296 extern­al applic­ants there were 147 (50%) female and 146 (49%) male applic­ants with one pre­fer­ring a term not lis­ted and 2 not dis­clos­ing. Of the 18 posts appoin­ted through the extern­al round, 11 were (61%) female and sev­en (39%) were male.

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1. So, look­ing at over­all totals, there were about the same num­ber of female applic­ants (155) to male (157). The num­ber of female to male appoint­ments was also the same, female 15 (50%), male 15 (50%).

2. An ana­lys­is of the recruit­ment data high­lights the fol­low­ing: a) There were more female appoint­ments to the lower graded band A posts than before — band A now has three female staff. b) In the last year, there have been an equal num­ber of female / male appoint­ments at band B1 (sea­son­al ranger level) c) Band C included three male appoint­ments and two female appoint­ments d) There were three female appoint­ments at band D and one male e) There were two male appoint­ments at band E

3. 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. The recruit­ment page of the web­site provides links to all our equal­ity policies, like the men­o­pause policy, sup­port for preg­nancy loss policy etc. iv. All recruit­ment pan­els con­tain male and female mem­bers. v. Recruit­ment advert­ising has been revamped to high­light the bene­fits of flex­ible work­ing. vi. Recruit­ment advert­ising includes nar­rat­ive to encour­age applic­ant diversity. vii. We are sup­port­ive, when pos­sible, of second­ment oppor­tun­it­ies. viii. We removed core hours, adop­ted a hybrid work­ing policy and have sig­ni­fic­antly improved remote access­ib­il­ity to IT facil­it­ies. ix. 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.

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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 CNPA.

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, annu­al­ised hours and hybrid work­ing arrange­ments which have been accessed equally by men and women across the organisation.

3. Whilst the gender pay gap has increased in 2024, it is still broadly improv­ing in the time since we star­ted report­ing on this data 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.

Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Pip Mack­ie, Human Resources Manager