It’s not all about the headline, but the progress underneath

Last week, we filed our annual gender pay gap report and didn’t take advantage of the postponement of the deadline. As a key priority in our business, work towards achieving greater diversity continues despite the challenges we are all facing. Very recent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that (together with low paid and young workers) women are likely to be disproportionately affected by the current COVID-19 crisis because women are one third more likely to work in a sector that has been shut down than men are.

Although, for now, the UK automotive sector is substantially shut down, an aim of gender balance across all sectors and at all levels of seniority would mitigate disproportional effects in a ‘more normal’ future economic downturn. More motivation then.     

Turning to our report and the results which are a snapshot of a single day in the business, in this case April 5th 2019. First of all, our results weren’t a surprise to us when we pulled together the report, because we knew them a year ago. Whilst I feel very dissatisfied to see a median hourly wage gap of 16.8 per cent, it is simply illustrating that we have more men in senior roles than women. So what do we continue to do about that?

It’s worth being careful not to confuse a gender pay gap with an equal pay gap. Our internal analysis gives us a high degree of certainty that we are paying equally and fairly regardless of sex (and all protected characteristics), and that our gender pay gap is a function of the demography of a stable and loyal workforce, not of unfairness or discrimination.

We have made huge progress in attracting a balanced cohort at graduate level, indeed our recent graduate intake was 80 per cent female, selected of course unequivocally on merit. A positive result like this can deteriorate your headline gender pay results in the short term, as in isolation it swells the number of females below the median. But only for now, because having worked directly with many of these highly talented new recruits, I think they’ll progress very quickly.

I’m also really pleased that initiatives such as external and internal mentoring, gender balanced shortlists and interview panels and unconscious bias learning, together with achieving balance in access to development and talent programmes have assisted a material improvement in gender balance in our ‘middle management’, from 28 per cent in 2015 to 44 per cent now.  But I don’t deny reality – our median gender pay gap will only equalise when the talented middle management progress into upper management in representative numbers - which takes some time in a stable workforce, but now at least the talent pool is progressing quickly towards being gender balanced.

I have a habit of asking myself and others what we could be doing differently, and I’m always very happy to receive advice from anywhere. Personally, I’ve made a resolution to spend more time influencing the incumbent senior management that recruitment in one’s own image is neither fair nor the best route to competitive advantage. I do acknowledge the irony that this involves a male in his forties (me) talking to a group with a strong representation of the characteristics of being male and in their forties, though not exclusively so by any means. At least I’ll be relatable, and I’ve got an armful of compelling evidence from inside and outside of our organisation.

Showing up on panels and talking about the issue of gender diversity in UK automotive is very worthwhile, and I’ll continue to do it. But beyond signalling to the audience that this is a genuine priority at Volkswagen Group UK, and one that the MD is heavily invested in, it’s what happens outside the conference room and back in the office that really matters.