Gender Pay Gap Reporting

At Sofology, we fully embrace the responsibility of providing a workplace that is fair, diverse and committed to treating each and every employee equally. We are dedicated to ensuring equal pay for male and female employees throughout the business, as well as offering the same opportunities to train, develop and thrive in every role. We therefore welcome the opportunity to publish, review and improve our Gender Pay Gap figures in line with the new legislation.

Understanding The Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap is a way to identify if there are any gaps in pay between men and women by using a set of calculations prescribed by legislation. These figures will give an overview of the gender balance within our business by comparing the average earnings for both men and women, regardless of role or seniority at Sofology. This information will help to identify any room for improvement within the organisation in terms of gender equality and equal opportunities being afforded to both men and women. The Gender Pay Gap reporting will enable Sofology to fully review and reduce gender pay differences across the organisation. Sofology will continue to strive to create a more balanced, diverse and rewarding work environment for all of our employees.

At Sofology, we have a number of roles which have standard rates of pay, for example; Sales Consultants, Sales Administrators, Customer Services, Van Drivers, Co-Drivers, Warehouse staff and Upholsterers. Men and women are paid the same rates of pay for these roles and the only difference in earnings would be down to performance, productivity or location.

In addition to our Driver population within our Operations teams, the workforce is predominantly male. This has significantly resulted in the mean bonus payment in comparison to women is lower.

Monitoring our gender pay data and, more importantly, understanding the factors that contribute to the differences will help to begin narrowing our Gender Pay Gap and will become part of a longer term strategy to help Sofology become recognised as an environment where women are equal, supported and driven to succeed.

Our Results - What is the Gender Pay Gap at Sofology?

Our gender pay gap figures are based on a relevant workforce of 1062 employees with a wide variety of skills primarily across retail, operations and head office business areas. Our employee base is a 66% male / 34% female split driven mainly by the fact that traditionally our operations and retail business areas have, for various reasons, attracted a male workforce.

Our analysis shows that our 11% mean and 11% median gender pay gap is a result of the following factors:

There are more males in senior positions throughout all business areas. There are 4 company directors at Sofology all of whom are male. We know there is more to do when it comes to leadership roles in our business and we are dedicated to achieving a higher % female representation in senior leadership roles.

The remuneration within our IT department is the highest within our Head Office. Technical IT roles are highly paid and attract a higher % of male applicants. Sofology is dedicated to recruiting female talent into traditionally male dominated roles within the business to improve the male versus female ratio of colleagues across the whole organisation.

The remuneration within our IT department is the highest within Head Office. Technical IT roles are highly paid and attract a higher % of male applicants. Sofology is dedicated to recruiting new female talent into traditionally male dominated roles within the business to improve the male versus female ratio of employees across the whole organisation.

Within our Head Office function, the largest department by headcount is Customer Service. Customer Service roles are lower paid, generally under £18,000 per annum, and the department has an 81% predominantly female workforce. Within retail, the highest paid roles are sales consultants, of which there is a 60:40 split between male and female.

Our bonus pay gap of -23% (mean) and -100% (median)

Our analysis shows that our -23% mean and -100% median bonus pay gap is clearly a result of that females that earn bonuses within or business tend to earn a greater bonus than their male counterparts.

Our Commitments

Giving everyone access to new career opportunities at Sofology is an integral platform to encourage female internal attraction. We have an internal vacancy platform, allowing any Sofologist looking for that next step the opportunity to be alerted when a suitable vacancy becomes available. In 2018 we will place more emphasis on our talent forums and use these to build diverse selection pools for senior roles.

In 2017, we introduced the Next Generation programme which allowed the opportunity to apply for in-house development and support to reach the next steps in their career path which was encouraged to be undertaken by both male and female employees.

Maternity, Paternity and Adoption support - We’ve enhanced payments to help new parents manage those first months with their new arrival, by increasing the payments to colleagues on maternity/adoption leave. We also support shared parental leave which means that colleagues, both male and female, can be flexible about the way they care for their child(ren).

As Sofology continues to open new stores across the UK there will be continued opportunities for all to progress their careers and benefit from the continued success of the business.