COMMENT In March 2020, the government suspended its enforcement of gender pay gap reporting for 2019 due to the “unprecedented uncertainty and pressure” employers were facing as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.
The global pandemic we are all living through will be etched in our memories for many reasons, but one perhaps not wholly unexpected fallout from Covid-19 is the potential negative impact it could have on gender parity. According to global management consultancy McKinsey & Company, women are significantly more vulnerable to the economic impact of the pandemic than men. While women make up 35% of global employment, 54% of job losses due to Covid will be women. This is largely due to the spike in demand for unpaid care, a burden disproportionately carried by women.
There’s no denying that, as a tool, gender pay methodology is blunt. It doesn’t distinguish the role that people are doing, it simply states their pay and bonus figures factually. But that aside, it has most definitely had an impact. It has placed the issue of gender equality firmly at the boardroom table and forced chief executives and boards to take a long, hard look at themselves. For me, however, the methodology is adversely affected by the fact that when the data is published it is mostly a year out of date, because businesses tend to publish as close to the April deadline as possible. This makes it very difficult to draw any meaningful links between the work businesses are doing to address the pay gap and the figures in the report.
For this reason, prior to the pandemic, we had made the proactive decision as a business to start aligning our report publication with the period of time the data related to. We were ready to publish our 2019 data and planned to follow swiftly with the 2020 data as soon as we had run the numbers.
The announcement that the deadline for 2019 reporting was to be relaxed was therefore timely, as it allowed us some breathing space to combine our data for 2019 and 2020, giving an even broader picture of the work we had been doing to address the pay gap in our business.
Progress during the pandemic
Our D&I work had not been put on the back foot during the pandemic, quite the opposite, our Balance in Business group has gone from strength to strength. One initiative that we are particularly proud of is our REAL for Women (Real Estate and Leadership for Women) programme, targeted specifically at helping to close the gap. Launched on International Women’s Day, just before lockdown, we quickly had to adapt the programme to ensure we could continue to support our talented women through their journeys to leadership, even if it was in a virtual setting. We are encouraged that out of our exceptional round of promotion nominations, two of our REAL for Women cohort have been put forward for promotion, one to director and one to associate director.
We are also excited to have been shortlisted for Investors in People’s Diversity & Inclusion Award. This is encouraging recognition of everything we have been doing through our Balance in Business programme over the past year, of which gender has been a key part.
Transactional roles
An area that hinders the progression of our industry massively is the lack of senior women in more transactional roles, those that are typically remunerated with commission and bonuses. I genuinely don’t believe that men and women are paid inequitably in our sector, but we have to ask ourselves the question: why are we not seeing more senior female agents rising through the ranks in transactional teams?
I’ve heard comments throughout my career about part-time working not being suited to transactional teams because clients expect a 24/7 response. I don’t buy that. Our clients are human beings too, they have conflicting commitments and are seeking that elusive work-life balance just like any of us.
I am optimistic that we will look back on this pandemic and see that it was a game-changer in more ways than one. The shift in the way we work, the acceptance of remote working by everyone, clients and agencies alike, have all helped to accelerate an understanding that it is absolutely possible to work flexibly and still be hugely successful in your career.
We know that the shift required to reduce our gender pay gap will take more time, but the programme and actions we have put in place over recent years are resulting in visible change, so I am encouraged that we are moving in the right direction. 2020 will go down in history as the year that rocked us all to our very core, let’s not let it become yet another excuse for why the gender pay gap remains unchanged.
Lydia Ings is HR director at Colliers International
