Gender pay gap – women & recruitment

Beate OeraDiversity & inclusivity, Posts from Fram, Research, insights & industry news

With the recent gender pay gap reporting completed, it is fair to say that the finance and insurance industries did not cover themselves in glory. They join construction as the sectors with the largest pay gaps. However, with a number of initiatives on the go, there is hope that change is coming. Check out our articles series on women in financial services, written for International Women’s Day, for our view.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d take a look at how our own industry fared. Having more female staff members, Fram’s pay gap is in favour of women, which puts us in the company of only 14% of firms that reported nationally. Industry wide, however, the picture is a little more complicated. Many firms have included their temporary agency staff in the data, which makes analysis difficult, as it essentially includes data from a number of other industries as well. Furthermore, recruitment has been lumped into the category ‘Administrative and support service activities’, which includes a range of firms outside recruitment.

Nevertheless, many of the biggest names in recruitment outperformed the UK average. Adecco posted a median hourly rate of 3.2% in favour of women, whilst Hays’ was 2.1% in favour of men. The national average stands at just over 18%. The graph below shows how some of the big names performed.

Gender pay gap - recruitment industry