Supermarket Asda has published its 2019 Gender Pay figures, in line with the requirement for large companies to report annually.
In a report submitted to the Government’s Gender Pay website, Asda has stated that, for the 2019 Gender Pay Gap reporting period:
– The median pay difference (the Office for National Statistics’ preferred measure) between all relevant men and women employed by Asda is 6.5%.
o This is a reduction of 1.1% compared to 2018 and 10.8% lower than the national average of 17.3% for full and part-time workers. Since 2017, the median pay gap at Asda has dropped by 2.4%.
– The mean pay difference between all relevant men and women employed by Asda is 11.1%.
o This is a reduction of 1.3% compared to 2017 and 5.1% lower than the national average of 16.2%.
– 84% of Asda’s colleagues work in hourly paid roles in stores, which have set hourly rates of pay. The median gender pay gap within that population, based on those rates alone, is 0%.
– 36% of those occupying senior roles at Asda are women, whereas 74% of those in junior roles are women.
Asda’s Chief People Officer, Hayley Tatum, said: “Our gender pay gap has improved again this year, and we continue to be significantly below the national average. Nevertheless, we recognise that, like many businesses, we still have challenges when it comes to female representation in more senior roles – and that is something we’re committed to addressing. It will naturally take time to see the full effect of the work we are doing, but I’m pleased that we continue to head in the right direction.”
Asda has put in place a number of initiatives to work to reduce the gap over the longer term and support more women into senior roles. These include delivering unconscious bias awareness training for all of its managers and introducing balanced candidate slates and interview panels for all senior hires. Asda has also set up a dedicated Gender Colleague Resource Group with representatives from different business formats to support the development of new initiatives to increase gender diversity.
In addition, the recent report ‘Striving for Inclusivity: Top European Companies’ by The Financial Times and Statistica, showed that Asda ranked 122 out of the 10,000 companies for inclusion. Out of the 36 UK retailers listed in the report, Asda ranked ninth overall for business wide inclusivity.
Read our 2019 Gender Pay Report here.
