Diamond endeavours to provide a collaborative, inclusive environment in which employees can succeed. As one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, its pioneering capabilities are helping to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research. We recruit employees from around the world who possess a diverse range of talents. In April 2021 we had 42 different nationalities working for us.
As of 5th April 2021, we had 596 men and 175 women employed at Diamond resulting in women making up just under 23% of our workforce. To put this in context women make up 24% of STEM employees in the UK (WISE - www.wisecampaign.org.uk/resources-for-action/ statistics), with further analysis from Engineering UK (June 2021) highlighting only 14.5% of people working in engineering are female.
Our 2021 mean gender pay gap is 10.3% (11.8% in 2020) and our median gender pay gap is 5.7% (7.7% in 2020). It is pleasing to report that these have both reduced since 2020. This reduction in 2021 is mainly due to a rise in promotions of women compared with the men/women ratio of staff during this period.
The main factor contributing to our mean and median gender pay gap continues to be the under-representation of women in senior science, technical and engineering roles (as highlighted above). We are confident however that there is no significant difference in pay between men and women in comparable jobs as verified in an independent Equal Pay Audit undertaken in 2021. We also continue to 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.
The mean bonus pay gap is -29.3% and the median bonus pay gap for 2021 is -100%. During the year 29.7% of men and 31.1% of women working at Diamond received a bonus. There were also a greater percentage of men receiving the lower level of long service award during this period. This reporting year was during the height of the coronavirus (COVID) pandemic, and as highlighted in last year’s report it is positive to note that 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.
It is heartening to highlight that there have been some small increases in the percentages of women in the Upper Middle Quartile and the Upper Quartile from 2020. However, there is more to do including mitigating any negative impact from Brexit on European employees and those associated with them and continuing to keep the impact of Covid as minimal as possible. During 2021 we continued to work on EDI initiatives including:
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.
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 continue to ensure our policies remain favourable and will be revising and presenting our revised Flexible Working and Homeworking policies to staff in April 2022.
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 and events. 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.
We are continuing to develop further methods of candidate attraction and assessment, for example, STEM Returners. We have reviewed our Careers pages, made changes to the online system, and have made some minor changes to support accessible and inclusive recruitment and selection methods that are consistent and transparent. We held training with Leonard Cheshire Trust for student supervisors who are responsible for recruiting students. This was to ensure we could meet the needs of disabled applicants and in line with the guaranteed interview scheme.
We continually update and enhance our management training provision, and this is also available to aspiring managers. All employees have access to a learning management system that allows them to access a wide range of learning including e-learning, resources, courses, and blended solutions for both professional and personal development.
Engaging with and inspiring the public continues to be a key part of the Diamond vision. The pandemic has had a major impact on engagement with the focus shifting from on-site to virtual and remote activities. In response, Diamond has moved rapidly to develop new programmes and systems to reach new and existing audiences and keep engaging and supporting during this unusual time. In 2020/21, we had approximately 9,606 significant interactions (30 + minutes) with ‘virtual’ visitors, including our user community, university and school students, members of the public and VIPs and stakeholders.
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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