Asda has published its gender pay figures for 2020 which show that it continues to make good progress in closing the gap in the average hourly pay rates of male and female colleagues across its business.
The supermarket has reduced both the mean and median gender pay rates for the third consecutive year and both figures are now well below the national average.
In a report submitted to the Government’s Gender Pay website, Asda confirmed the following:
– The median pay difference between all male and female Asda colleagues is 5.5%.
o This is a reduction of 1% compared to 2019 and 10% lower than the national average of 15.5% for full and part-time workers. Since 2017, the median pay gap at Asda has reduced by 3.4%.
– The mean pay difference between all relevant men and women employed by Asda is 8.4%.
o This is a reduction of 2.7% compared to 2019 and 6.2% lower than the national average of 14.6%.
Last year saw a significant increase in the proportion of female colleagues in the upper two pay quartiles and a reduction in the proportion of female colleagues in the lowest pay quartile.
– 86% 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%.
– Female colleagues occupy 38% of senior roles at Asda.
Asda’s Chief People Officer, Hayley Tatum said: “We are committed to being a diverse and inclusive employer so I am pleased that we have reduced our pay gap again and continue to be significantly below the national average. We are continually looking at ways to improve and, like many businesses of our size, there are challenges with regards to female representation in senior roles.
“This is something we are committed to change and we are accelerating the development of high potential female employees through a number of programmes and initiatives, which will help us keep reducing the gap.”
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.
To read Asda’s 2020 Gender Pay Report in full, click here.
