There is no denying that when it comes to gender parity, the real estate sector falls a long way behind the UK average.
You just have to look around your office or any event you attend to see there just are not as many women in the sector as there are men. And there are certainly not as many women in senior positions. But the latest figures, captured from the government’s Gender Pay Gap reporting site on 5 April (the day after the deadline to report) show that real estate is slowly but surely nudging the figures in the right direction.
The national mean average gender pay gap is 14.9%. According to EG’s analysis of a dozen of the UK’s largest agents, the advisory sector average sits at around 29%. Only CBRE outperforms the national average at 12.4%, with Knight Frank and JLL nudging closer at 16.2% and 18.9% respectively.
The advisory average has moved in year-on-year, however, from 30.7% – a small but notable difference.
There were big movers within the agency sector too, with LSH moving its mean hourly gender pay gap in by 13.7 percentage points to 44.2% between 2021 and 2022. Still a very large gap to close, but a significant step in the right direction. Bidwells, CBRE, JLL and Savills all also saw positive moves in the right direction over the year.
More work needs to be done across the agency sector when it comes to the bonus gap, with only Colliers and Knight Frank showing a positive shift and the average bonus gap across the top 12 firms sitting at 64.4%. Only Bidwells, Carter Jonas, CBRE and Knight Frank outperformed the average across their peers.
The property owning and operating part of the sector is on a similar journey. Of the eight major propcos that EG analysed, most have seen a positive move in the right direction when it comes to the gender pay gap. The average across British Land, Canary Wharf Group, Grainger, Grosvenor, Hammerson, Landsec, the Crown Estate and The Office Group was 23.7% in 2022, down from 25.6% a year earlier, with all eight firms showing a tightening of the gap.
Close to parity at board level – and a female chief executive in Helen Gordon – helped Grainger sway its bonus gap in favour of women, with a gap of -19.8%, up from -9.6% in 2021. Across the eight propcos EG analysed, the average bonus gap was significantly smaller than across the agency firms at 30.3%. Half of the firms analysed – Grainger, Canary Wharf Group, Landsec and the Crown Estate – outperformed their peers.
How to close the gender pay gap
When it comes to making significant strides forward in closing the gender pay gap, the biggest lever the real estate industry can pull is enabling more women to move into senior leadership roles.
Across both the agency firms and propcos analysed by EG, only Grosvenor had more women (just) in its top pay quartile than in its lowest quartile. On average, across all 20 firms we analysed, women made up almost 57% of the lowest-paid quartile and just 27.3% of the upper quartile.
Nick Pettit, senior partner at Bidwells, puts his firm’s improvement in its pay gap from 33% to 26% down to an increase in women in senior roles across the business.
“We have achieved this not through positive discrimination,” he says, “but by focusing on removing the barriers that women may have historically faced in our firm.”
For Chanelle Gray, UK head of diversity and inclusion at Savills, creating environments where women can continue their careers paths upwards is vital in the journey to closing the gender pay gap. For her that means implementing family-friendly policies that enable flexibility for parents – of all genders – and providing role models and mentoring to show employees what they can achieve.
“Our focus is on giving people the skills at associate level to push them to director,” she says.
Noel McGonigle, HR director for the UK and Europe at Savills, agrees. He says providing more proactive support for parents as they prepare to leave and return – and for managers – has proven very successful.
But for him it is providing mentoring for people going for promotion that is proving to be most fruitful. He says that programme is giving individuals the confidence that they can lead with their own style. “We’re bursting the bubble,” he says, “so people understand that you don’t have to do it like he’s done it.”
CBRE UK chief executive Ciaran Bird says leadership buy-in, mentoring, inclusive policies and strong apprenticeship programmes all play a part in closing both gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
“Our Women’s Network plays a key role in our efforts and works in partnership with the leadership team to ensure we are all accountable for driving change,” says Bird. “Initiatives in 2022 were extensive and included career mentoring, talent and development focus, people manager programmes, caring policies, hybrid working guidelines, new recruitment standards and a generous childcare allowance.
“Our apprentice programme and charities such as Career Ready have also helped us to open up our fantastic industry to the next generation of talent.”
At Savills, an increase in the number of apprentices in the business from 67 in 2020 to 230 in 2022 has played a key role in helping to diversify the business. And for Gray, ensuring the businesses are engaging with schools to discover the future pipeline of talent is essential.
Many of the big firms that have to legally report their gender pay gaps have the resources to employ specialist diversity and inclusion leads to focus on key activity to help close the gap.
However, much of the wider real estate industry does not have access to this level of resourcing. So here, with a little help from the 20 firms listed above, are five key measures to focus in on if you are committed to a diverse and inclusive real estate sector.
1. Identify your talent pool
The Crown Estate says that succession planning for its group leadership team has enabled it to identify that 63% of its next level leaders are women. This talent pool will have targeted investment set against it to help them realise their leadership potential over the next two to three years.
2. Provide coaching and mentoring
For parental leavers, returners and managers and for that future talent, to understand how not all leaders look and act the same.
3. Refresh your policies
Hybrid working is no longer an alien concept. One benefit of lockdown was that it showed businesses and individuals that work could be flexible and still productive. Create policies that help employees balance work and family life, whatever their level.
4. Open up your career opportunities
Create an apprenticeship programme, reach out to schools and look to different sources to advertise opportunities. Savills has recently signed a deal with the Department for Work and Pensions to advertise all its vacancies at job centres around the country.
5. Make commitments
If you measure it, you can manage it.
Ethnicity reporting lags
Of the 20 real estate businesses analysed in this piece on gender pay gaps, only seven had reported ethnicity pay gap figures at the same time.
Ethnicity pay gap reporting is not yet a legal requirement, but for firms committed to rebalancing the sector, collecting and sharing data is key.
Findings from British Land, Colliers, Gerald Eve, Grosvenor, JLL, Landsec and Savills reveal an average pay gap of 22.2%, compared with a 26.9% average gender pay gap across all 20 firms analysed. Year-on-year and like-for-like, the ethnicity pay gap has improved by 2.4 percentage points.
Lack of representation across the sector remains the biggest issue, however, with an average ethnic minority representation in the top pay quartile being just less than 8% and just 19.5% in the lower quartile.
This compares with 27.3% and 56.8% respectively when it comes to female representation.
Further reading
Many firms compile comprehensive reports on both their gender and ethnicity pay gaps, providing detailed explanations of the numbers and what they are doing to improve on their figures. See below for useful resources to help with best practice on closing the gap.
- Bidwells
- British Land
- Carter Jonas
- CBRE
- Colliers
- Crown Estate
- Gerald Eve
- Grainger
- Grosvenor
- JLL
- Landsec
- LSH
- Savills
- The Office Group
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews
