Gender and Ethnicity pay: 2024
This report is our 8th gender pay gap report. It is also the first time we have voluntarily published our ethnicity pay gap data, reflecting our focus on, and commitment to, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
Our report shares the differences in pay for both gender and ethnicity. This means the difference between men and women, and the difference between employees reporting as being part of a Black, Asian and Minority ethnic group and their White colleagues.
The Gender Pay Gap, and the Ethnicity Pay Gap
The gender pay gap looks at the difference in the average pay between all men and women in an organisation, taking account of the full range of jobs and salaries.
The ethnicity pay gap looks at the difference in the average pay between Black, Asian and Minority ethnic employees and White employees in an organisation, taking account of the full range of jobs and salaries.
Gender and ethnicity pay gaps are different to legal equal pay requirements, which look at the differences between pay for men and women, and between pay for Black, Asian and Minority ethnic and White employees, who carry out the same jobs, similar work, or work of equal value.
The UK government sets out calculations to use to generate the gender pay gap figures, and we have used these to calculate both our gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
Why does this report only include ‘men’ and ‘women’ as categories?
We collect data on gender identity as it’s a more inclusive question which recognises, celebrates and includes trans and non-binary colleagues. This report uses ‘legal gender’ data in compliance with current legislation. We recognise this limitation and hope that, as completion rates improve, we can report in a more inclusive way in future.
Mean Pay Gap
The mean gender pay gap is the difference in the hourly pay for women compared to men. It is calculated by comparing the average pay of men to the average pay of women in our organisation. The mean ethnicity pay gap is calculated comparing all Black, Asian and Minority ethnic and White employees.
Median Pay Gap
The median represents the middle point. If we separately lined up all the women and all the men in our organisation in order of hourly pay, the median pay gap is the difference between the middle man and middle woman, and the middle Black, Asian or Minority ethnic employee and the middle White employee.
The figures reported are for 5th April 2024 the bonus figures are for 12 months leading up to 5th April 2024.
Our commitment to closing gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
We are committed to ensuring that we are an equitable and inclusive organisation.
We believe that an inclusive environment where all employees feel valued and supported, particularly for women and Black, Asian and Minority ethnic employees, is key to narrowing the gender and ethnicity pay gaps. It helps us improve employee retention and create a balanced workforce at all levels, which in turn can drive career – and pay – progression.
Setting and working towards achieving DEI targets
In 2023 we introduced our 3-year DEI targets focussed on ethnicity, gender and disability. By setting targets in these areas, we can positively drive improvement over time, reaching our ambition to be a more diverse organisation. Alongside this, we have created a DEI action plan to focus on practical goals we can implement.
We have exceeded our gender target and are proud to report that currently 48% of leaders are women. While progress has been made, only 16% of employees in leadership roles are Black, Asian or Minority ethnic. We acknowledge that more work is needed and remain committed to driving meaningful change.
Leadership and DEI Initiatives
Our leadership community is actively involved in driving DEI across the organisation. We have invested in equipping our leaders to foster an inclusive culture, including an Inclusive Leadership programme for our Executive team.
Increasing gender and ethnic diversity in leadership roles ensures that diverse perspectives are included in decision making, such as pay progression and talent retention strategy and as a result we expect to see a narrowing of gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
Employee development and support
We have designed and implemented programmes and policies to enable all employees to progress their careers and help movement into more senior roles with higher pay and bonus opportunities.
Sponsorship
We have recently launched "Elevate" a pilot sponsorship and reverse mentoring programme specifically aimed at supporting the career development of Black, Asian and Minority ethnic colleagues who are currently underrepresented at leadership level.
Inclusive family policies
Our family policies are effective from day one of employment to make sure our policies are inclusive of everyone and reflect the diverse situations people face in life. This helps employees to progress their careers without facing additional barriers.
Support for parental and adoption leave
We are continuing to offer coaching to those returning to work following parental leave, and adoption leave, helping all employees who take leave at the birth or adoption of their children to reconnect and successfully return to their roles and the business.
Inclusive Recruitment Practices
We have launched an inclusive recruitment guide for managers to provide a consistent approach to practices around recruitment and internal career development with a focus on skills-based recruitment. We have redesigned our recruitment processes to be more inclusive for all colleagues and candidates, for example we encourage the use of inclusive language in writing job descriptions and person specifications. We aim to ensure that our interview panels are diverse and reflect the diversity at The Crown Estate. We actively seek to attract talent from a more diverse range of sources, and are currently partnering with Women in Data, 10,000 Interns and the Association of Black Engineers to widen our talent pool. We are also signatories of the Race at Work Charter. This supports greater representation of women and Black, Asian and Minority ethnic employees in the organisation while helping to close any pay gaps resulting from underrepresentation.
Recruitment Data Analysis and Campaigns
Analysing our recruitment data allows us to understand how our recruitment processes attract different groups and identify any barriers that exist for underrepresented groups. We have launched candidate attraction campaigns targeting more applications from underrepresented groups. By tracking the diversity of employees across dimensions such as gender and ethnicity, we can analyse the effectiveness of our recruitment and retention approach to identify trends, track progress and any opportunities for improvement. This helps ensure gender and ethnicity representation at all levels of the organisation and we have seen an increase in women and Black, Asian and Minority ethnic new hires.
DEI Networks
The Crown Estate has four employee led networks - the Race Ethnicity and Culture Network, Gender, Accessibility and Out on the Estate Networks which continue to raise awareness, support, and advocate for colleagues and allies across the business.
Gender Pay
Base Pay
In 2024 we continued to close the pay gap between men and women. Our mean (average) base pay gap reduced by 1.4% and now stands at 7.9%◊, and our median pay gap reduced slightly by 0.3% to 11.0%◊.
We continue to drive positive change through diverse recruitment opportunities and a focus on talent management and progression to promote women into more senior roles. During this reporting period, headcount increased by 20%, with more women joining the business than men. This means that the proportion of women in the business (using full pay relevant for reporting purposes) now stands at 48%, up from 46% in 2023.
Bonus Pay
We have made further progress on reducing the mean bonus gap from 23.2% to 19%◊.
Our median gap has widened from -4.3% in 2023 to10.9%◊, we consider this to be due to timing of new hires joining the organisation, rather than a more meaningful shift. All permanent and fixed term employees participate in our bonus scheme; when they first become eligible depends on their start date. During the reporting period more women than men joined the organisation, but the timing of start dates resulted in more men than women becoming eligible for bonuses. This has led to a widening of the median bonus gap for this reporting period.
Proportion of men and women receiving bonuses
As explained above, the proportion of women and men receiving bonuses is impacted by joiners and leavers to The Crown Estate and employees becoming eligible for a bonus for the first time.
Gender split by pay quartile
As the graphic below illustrates, we have a relatively balanced representation of men and women in the upper middle quartile of our organisation. The higher and lower levels of our pay spectrum are disproportionately men, and the lower middle quartile is disproportionately women. Our lower pay quartile is weighted towards men due to the number of operational roles in this quartile including roles on the Windsor Estate (where 63% of employees are men). We have seen a 5.6% increase in the number of women in the upper pay quartile, reflecting an increase of women in senior leadership roles through recruitment and internal promotion.
Ethnicity
We are proud of our high declaration rate of 86% for diversity data, which helps us focus interventions in the right areas to support Black, Asian and Minority ethnic colleagues*. We will continue to encourage colleagues to complete their data and provide a supportive environment in which they feel able to do this, so that we can continue to build our understanding of how ethnicity is represented throughout our organisation.
*71.3%◊ of employees have declared they are White, 13.1%◊ of employees have declared they are part of an ethnic minority (6% Asian/ Asian British, 2% Black/ Black British, 3% from multiple ethnic groups and 1% from other ethnic groups). 1.5%◊ of employees prefer not to disclose their ethnicity, 0.1%◊ declared ethnicity unknown and 14.0%◊ of employees have not yet declared.
Base pay
Our mean ethnicity pay gap is -13%◊ and our median ethnicity pay gap is -5.3%◊. This illustrates that the overall mean and median pay of Black, Asian and Minority ethnic groups is higher than that of White employees.
Our overall ethnicity pay gap is significantly impacted by differing representation at each level within the organisation and by our positive representation on the Executive. This reflects our commitment to increasing diversity throughout our leadership teams, an approach we will continue to drive forward across all levels of The Crown Estate.
Improving and understanding representation throughout the organisation will be key to closing the pay gap. Small changes to our ethnicity declaration rates can have a statistically significant impact on our figures. We recognise that the pay gap may change as declaration rates improve.
Bonus pay
Our mean ethnicity bonus gap is -53.3%◊, meaning our bonus gap favours ethnic minority individuals. As outlined above, this is significantly impacted by our positive ethnic minority representation on our Group Leadership Team, as bonus payments increase with seniority.
Our median ethnicity bonus gap is 17.2%◊, in favour of white employees. This is largely driven by the proportion of Black, Asian and Minority ethnic employees compared to White employees in the organisation.
Proportion of Black, Asian and Minority ethnic and White employees receiving bonuses
All permanent and fixed term employees are eligible to participate in our bonus scheme. However, whether an employee is awarded a bonus in the year they join or leave The Crown Estate will depend on the timing of when they join or leave.
Ethnicity split by pay quartile
As the graphic below illustrates, our lower quartile has relatively few ethnically diverse employees, with representation increasing in the lower middle quartile. In the upper pay quartiles of our organisation 16% of our leadership are Black, Asian and Minority ethnic employees.
We remain committed to ensuring that we are an equitable and inclusive organisation and to closing the gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
I look forward to continuing to share our data in this way to support a wider understanding of the progress we are making.
Lisa White - Director of People and Culture
You can find further information regarding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion here: https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/careers/diversity-equity-and-inclusion
For more information on how we calculate our Gender Pay Gap and our Ethnicity Pay Gap, please see our reporting methodology document.
Limited Assurance: KPMG LLP has provided independent limited assurance over selected gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap data highlighted on this webpage with the symbol ◊, using the assurance standard ISAE (UK) 3000. KPMG has issued an unqualified opinion over the selected data. KPMG’s full assurance statement is available below, which together with our Reporting methodology should be read in conjunction with the assured gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap data above.