Gender pay gap report 2017

From this year all UK employers with more than 250 staff have been required by government to publish data annually on their gender pay gap.

The gender pay gap between women and men is not the same as equal pay for men and women.

Equal pay makes sure men and women are paid the same for the same or similar work, and is a legal requirement.

A gender pay gap describes the difference in average pay between all men and women across an organisation, regardless of the work they perform.

The Francis Crick Institute does not have an equal pay issue, although we do have a gender pay gap.

The Crick gender pay gap

The median gender pay gap at the Crick was 7.2% and mean pay gap was 15.4% on the snapshot date of 5 April 2017, based on hourly rates of pay.

These are shown below and compared with the national average.

The gender pay gap at the Crick is not acceptable to us as an organisation, even though it is smaller than the national average.

Understanding the gap

The main reason for our gender pay gap is that there are more men than women in senior, highly paid roles at the Crick. Women make up over 50% of the workforce but hold only 40% of posts in the upper salary quartile.

Reducing the gap

The Francis Crick Institute is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, which is the right thing to do and also benefits our research. Therefore we intend to reduce our gender pay gap.

The Crick aims to bring together outstanding scientists in a wide range of disciplines from across the globe, and scientific excellence benefits from diversity. Diversity increases breadth and perspective, leading to greater creativity and productivity. Significant changes will take time, but we are taking steps to promote inclusivity, support working parents and recruit and develop future female leaders in science.

Our parent institutes that came together in forming the Crick in 2015 had an imbalance in men and women in senior science roles. Since establishing the new institute, this balance has shown a shift through our recruitment of new research group leaders and our hosting of groups from our university partners who are selected on merit through competition.

Gender balance in research group leaders

Today, women make up 27% of our research group leaders, up from 21% in 2015.

We also are offering a number of initiatives to support further change:

• Generous support for childcare costs for parents with young children returning to work is being introduced from April 2018
• Automatic fixed-term contact extensions for those taking parental leave
• Flexibility on review dates for research group leaders who have taken extended periods of leave, for example maternity leave
• Support for group leaders who wish to work part-time
• Reviews of part-time group leaders will be based on part-time employment
• Mentoring programmes for early career group leaders
• Target for women to make up at least one third of the initial shortlist in recruiting new group leaders
• Training in equality, diversity and inclusion for all staff

The gender pay gap will be reported each year allowing us to determine whether these measures are improving the present situation.

I confirm that our gender pay gap calculations are accurate and meet the requirements of the regulations.

Paul Nurse
Director