Consultation

2011 Equal Pay Review

During the summer/autumn of 2011, the University undertook a full Equal Pay Review, in line with our Single Equality Scheme Action Plan

The Review is being undertaken by a project team comprising HR professionals from Diversity, Reward and HR Operations. The team will be led by Richard Boggie, Reward Manager, and overseen by Veryan Johnston, Executive Director of HR.

Initial Results

We are currently analysing and double-checking our initial findings, which were shared with a consultation group on 3 November.

These findings will be reported to Staff Committee on 30 November and Diversity Committee on 5 December.

We will publish findings on this site when available.

What is an Equal Pay Review?

This is a review of our current pay and reward practices, policies and systems, to check for any unfair bias, to explore the reasons for any differences in the way people are rewarded and, where we think differences are not justified, to develop action to remove that difference.

The most common evidence used in an Equal Pay Review is to look for a 'pay gap' – this is a difference between the average pay of two particular groups, e.g. men and women, disabled and non-disabled staff. Persistent or significant pay gaps (e.g. more than 5%) between staff doing work of equal value (i.e. on the same grade) are a key piece of evidence and need to be investigated to show why the gap exists.

The aims of this Review are set out in detail in our Project Outline document (PDF, 32kB)

We will be holding formal consultations with stakeholders, including campus trades unions, at key stages in the Review.

If you would like to contribute in some way, please do get in touch. You can email richard.boggie@ncl.ac.uk, or call Richard on (0191) 222 3653.

The first consultation event took place on 22 July 2011, where the project aims and scope were outlined. See a summary of the feedback received (PDF, 21kB).

Evidence from the 2010 Employee Opinion Survey

We asked two questions in our last employee opinion survey that are directly relevant to our Equal Pay Review. These questions are shown below, along with those groups who expressed significantly less positive responses for these questions. While these results do not necessarily indicate unfair practice or discrimination, they raise the question why are staff in these groups more negative about their pay and reward?

The % figures shown relate to the proportion of staff who responded either 'Agree' or 'Tend to Agree'.

  • Q1.20 I feel fairly paid for the work I do.
    • University score 71%
    • Any Other White 61.4%
    • Black & Minority Ethnic 62.8%
    • Academic non-clinical 61%
    • Teaching only 63%
    • Term-time contract 61%
    • Casual staff 66%
    • Grade B staff 52%
  • Q1.21 Overall, I feel the University offers a good pay and reward package.
    • University score 81%
    • Male staff 75.9%
    • Any Other White 68.3%
    • Black & Minority Ethnic 70.8%
    • Gay men 61.2%
    • Teaching only 67%
    • Term-time contract 74%
    • Casual staff 73%
    • Grade B staff 63%