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Diamond endeavours to provide a collaborative, inclusive environment in which employees can flourish. As a world-leading centre for synchrotron science, Diamond is fortunate to recruit from around the world. Our employees have a diverse range of talents and expertise with 44 different nationalities working for us.
As at the 5 April 2020, we had 572 men and 168 women employed at Diamond resulting in women making up 23% of our workforce. This reflects the national picture as the UK Government data from 2020 highlighted women make up 24% of the core – Science Technology Engineering Mathematical (STEM) workforce (WISE Workforce statistics 2020) in the UK.
Our 2020 mean gender pay gap is 11.8% and our median gender pay gap is 7.7%, which as anticipated, have increased from 2019. As highlighted in the 2019 report, last year’s reduction was mainly due to one-off bonuses being paid during the snapshot date and no bonus payments were made during the snapshot date in 2020. Whilst it is disappointing that the gender pay gap has not fallen, it should be put in context with the national mean gender pay gap of 15.5% in April 2020.
The main factor contributing to our mean and median gender pay gap is the under-representation of women in senior science and technical roles, and not because of men and women being paid differently for comparable jobs. A recent independent Equal Pay Audit has also concluded that Diamond is paying men and women equally within its grading system. We also ensure all posts are evaluated using the Korn-Ferry Hay job evaluation system which is internationally recognised as a robust methodology for determining the weight of different roles.
There is no mean or median bonus pay gap for 2020. During the year 85.2% of men and 79.9% of women received a bonus. There was a company-wide bonus with a qualifying start date and other bonus and long service awards paid during the twelve months.
While the coronavirus (COVID) pandemic took hold after the date of this report, we have not seen a drop in the percentage of women who work at Diamond, despite the national picture of more women dropping out of the labour market due to the pandemic. To support our staff in these challenging times we also adapted our policies and increased flexibility to address the personal challenges we all faced during the pandemic and all staff retained their full pay throughout. We undertook training and EDI activities virtually and extended mental health and wellbeing support. It is also pleasing to note that we received a high score for Diversity and Inclusion on our Glassdoor profile, 4.6 out of 5 (Sept 2021).
Reducing the Gender Pay Gap
We will also be working towards:
Andrew Harrison
CEO, Diamond Light Source
Gender pay gap is the difference between the average rates of pay for men and women. It reflects broad trends in employment and salaries at an organisation, rather than comparing individuals.
It’s not the same as equal pay, which is the legal requirement to pay people the same rate for the same work.
All UK employers with more than 250 staff are legally required to publish gender pay gap data each year.
The Office for National Statistics state that it is important to look beyond the headline figures, for example 36% of the pay gap is estimated to be driven by occupation group and working pattern.
Download our report here.
Flexibility – We offer generous family friendly and flexible working practices to our employees and promote these regularly via our internal channels to staff and as standard practice on our job vacancies. We have reviewed our policies via our Working Families membership and have been promoting flexibility through their campaigns in 2020/21. We continue to ensure our policies remain favourable and will be revising and presenting our revised Flexible Working and Homeworking policies to staff this year. We are also currently awaiting the results of the WF Modern Families Benchmarking and have engaged flexibility expert Sarah Jackson OBE who delivered a well-attended session on making flexibility work.
Diversity – An organisation wide EDI strategy and action plan guides us on three core standards - Athena Swan, Disability Confident and Valuing People through Diversity and Inclusion. In our commitment to these standards, we continue to build competence and confidence amongst employees and managers through ongoing communications, events, training, and coaching activity. Membership of enei has given us a wide access to seminars and webinars including on disability, race equality and sex and gender as well as many wellbeing sessions aimed at all protected groups, including neuro-diverse employees. Diamond have sponsored and rolled out the Headspace mindfulness and meditation wellbeing app to all employees and have a regular wellbeing newsletter. The new EDI Newsletter has featured Diamond case studies and role models and is themed to provide much more detailed material on different aspects of diversity and inclusion.
Reward & Recognition – We have undertaken a significant review of our pay and grading processes and policies within Diamond to ensure they are fit for purpose and that any barriers are identified and addressed to ensure fairness and consistency in reward and recognition as well as career and pay progression.
Recruitment & Selection – We are continuing to develop further methods of candidate attraction and assessment, including developing our employer brand and endeavouring to ensure accessible and inclusive recruitment and selection methods that are consistent and transparent. We are aiming to remove any barriers and unconscious biases and tap into a more diverse pool of candidates
Learning & Development – We continue to enhance our management training provision and open this up to a wider pool of employees. All employees have access to a learning management system that allows them to access a wider range of learning including eLearning and at a time and pace that suits them.
Outreach – One of our goals is to engage with a diverse range of audiences, connecting people with the wide range of science and engineering that we undertake. In 2019/20 we welcomed over 5,000 visitors, from school and university students to VIPS, stakeholders and the general public. We continue to develop new audience bases while maintaining our commitment to work with, train, and learn from members of our user community and the wider public.
Policies and Procedures – We continue to update existing and introduce new policies and procedures, ensuring that equality is considered when these are produced. This includes removing obstacles to opportunities and offering enhanced benefits over and above statutory requirements where possible.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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Diamond Light Source Ltd
Diamond House
Harwell Science & Innovation Campus
Didcot
Oxfordshire
OX11 0DE
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