The government defines how the Gender Pay Gap must be
reported. Northumbria University Services Limited (NUSL) is a subsidiary
company of Northumbria University and reporting the NUSL Gender Pay Gap
separately is a statutory requirement. The guidance for employers was last
updated on 9 January 2024 and this guidance was reviewed before the pay gaps
for Northumbria University and NUSL were calculated.
Headcounts given in this Pay Gap report are for staff who
meet the government’s inclusion criteria. As the numbers include hourly paid
and other infrequent staff, they will not match the overall headcount of
salaried employees on the snapshot date. The snapshot date for this report is 31
March 2023.
How pay gaps are calculated
Government guidance for preparing data and carrying out the
calculations is checked for amendments and updates as the first step in the
reporting process every year. The government requires mean and median pay gaps,
bonuses, and pay quartile breakdowns to be reported for gender. The same
methodology is used to calculate the ethnicity, disability and intersectional
pay gaps and the same metrics are reported.
From a ‘snapshot’ of employees on a specific date and their
pay over a defined period, pay gaps are calculated by comparing average hourly
rates of pay. Only 'full-pay relevant employees' are included. This excludes
those receiving reduced pay due to leave (such as maternity leave). Hourly pay
calculations consider differences in working hours by using a full-time
equivalent measure for salaried employees and a twelve-week average for
employees who work variable hours. Using hourly rate calculations allows for an
accurate comparison between part-time and full-time roles, ensuring fair
measurement by standardising pay across different work schedules. There are
additional calculations for bonus pay gaps which include relevant and full-pay
relevant employees.
Summary
of Pay Gap Terms
- Full-pay relevant employee: an employee who is paid
their usual, full pay during the pay period. Employees who receive reduced pay
during the period, for example because they are on reduced pay sick leave, are relevant
employees but not full-pay relevant employees.
- Mean: Mean is what is usually meant by average. Mean
pay is calculated by adding up the pay of all employees and dividing by the
number of employees. The mean can be skewed by very high or very low pay and
may be more changeable from year to year than the median.
- Median: This is the middle value when hourly
equivalent pay is ranked from lowest to highest. Half of employees earn more
than the median and half earn less. It’s generally considered a better or truer
measure of average pay than the mean, partly because it’s not distorted by very
high or low values.
- Pay Quartiles: To create the pay quartiles, pay is
split into four equal parts, each with the same number of employees, from the
lowest to highest earners at the university. People in the lower and lower
middle quartiles earn below the median and people in the upper middle and upper
quartiles earn above the median. Imbalances within the quartiles lead to pay
gaps.
- Equal Pay: Pay gaps are aggregate measures that can
be influenced by a variety of factors, including the type of work. At
Northumbria University, everyone is paid the same for doing the same work. The
existence of pay gaps does not mean that pay is unequal for the same or similar
jobs.
- Pay Gap: Pay gaps are the difference in average pay
between groups of people at the university. It's not about individual positions
but about how pay is distributed across all employees. The gender pay gap
measures the difference in average pay between men and women. The ethnicity pay
gap measures the difference between employees from minority ethnic backgrounds
and white employees, and the disability pay gap measures the difference between
Disabled employees and non-Disabled employees.
- Horizontal Segregation: This refers the clustering of
groups of people into different types of jobs, which leads to pay disparities
due different rates of average pay. For example, average pay for Professional
Support roles is lower than average pay for Academic roles, and the proportion
of women who work in Professional Support roles at Northumbria is greater than
the proportion of women who work in Academic roles.
- Vertical Segregation: This term refers to how men and
women are represented at different grades in the University pay structure, with
more women than men in the lowest grades and more men than women in the higher
grades, affecting the overall pay gap.
