Ashtons Legal Gender Pay Gap Report

The first thing which is quickly apparent is that Ashtons employs a much higher proportion of women than men. This is not intentional but just linked to the roles that we need to fill and the gender of the people applying for those jobs.

In order to produce the required gender pay gap figures we have to convert everyone’s annual salary figure into the equivalent hourly rate and then produce lists of the hourly rates paid to men and to women.

We then report on the differences. The median gender pay gap is the difference between the middle figures in the two lists. The mean gender pay gap is the difference between the averages taken across the full lists.

The table below shows the firm’s overall median and mean gender pay gap and bonus gap based on hourly rates of pay as at the snapshot date of 5 April 2017, and bonuses paid in the year to 5 April 2017. Our figures do show an overall pay gap in favour of men, but for perfectly logical reasons which are explained below the data tables.

Having collected and analysed our data, we wanted to understand the reasons for our gender pay gap. Broadly this comes down to the majority of our male employees being in professionally qualified senior roles.

As highlighted above, at the time of the analysis 81% of our workforce was female and only 19% male. We have many female employees at all salary levels in our business and we have more women than men in each salary quartile.

The firm had 57 employees in a Legal Assistant / Legal Secretary role, all of who were female. This is 19% of our workforce. Our statistics are very similar to others across the legal sector.

The data indicates that male and female employees have equal access to bonuses. As bonuses are largely based on a percentage of salary, it is unsurprising that there is a gender pay gap in terms of the mean bonus figure given the proportion of male employees in more senior positions.

We will continually monitor our gender pay gap and, where possible, take steps to improve it. We have introduced pay bands to ensure that all decisions about pay are made fairly and in keeping with our commitment.

As a firm, we offer access to internal and external training courses to those who wish to progress, with no gender bias. We are also recruiting an increasing number of apprentices, some of whom are male, which may in time help to redress the balance.

As a firm, we strive to offer our employees the right culture and working environment. We have taken huge strides in offering flexible working to staff and at the latest count 52% of our employees did not work the standard 0900 – 1700 Monday to Friday working week.

We are committed to embedding a culture combining productivity with flexibility into the firm, and helping employees to achieve their desired work-life balance. The introduction of our Paid Time Off policy has gone a long way to achieving this for some employees, however we still have ongoing projects around agile working and are committed to developing this for all of our employees.

We also provide a generous and supportive package for mothers, fathers, partners and adopters which includes enhanced maternity pay. Our aim is to create a working environment where everyone can be confident, comfortable and supported to thrive, develop and succeed.