The gender pay gap is the average difference between how much men and women are paid in an organization. The gender pay gap is different to unequal pay - "paying women less for the same work" - which is illegal. As a society we have achieved progress in recent history on the path to gender equality yet, we still have work to do. The gender pay gap highlights these outstanding issues. CMS Distribution has a part to play in closing this gap and improving the gender balance in our industry.
Frank Salmon, Chief Executive Officer & Founder
"I am pleased that we are publishing our first Gender Pay Gap statement. Gender pay disparities have been a persistent issue in our society, where women, on average, earn less than their male counterparts for similar work. There can be various factors for this outcome, however, at CMS I believe that if we work together to address the root cause and implement practical solutions, we can move forward with a more inclusive and equitable gender pay outcome for all our staff. Our gender pay vision, is to achieve gender pay equality for all our team members, that is equitable regardless of gender."
This gender pay gap report covers a snapshot from April 2022 of CMS Distribution UK employees only. The report is based on 261 people.
Our Hourly Pay Gap
At CMS, women earn 85p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. The median is finding the middle number of a group of numbers when they're arranged from smallest to largest. If there are two middle numbers, you take the average of those two. This means women's median hourly pay is 14.6% lower than men’s at CMS.
The mean is finding the average of a group of numbers. You add up all the numbers and then divide by how many numbers there are. The Gender Pay Gap report also takes into consideration mean hourly pay. Women’s mean hourly pay is 20.2% lower than men’s at CMS.
Our Values'
We acknowledge that as a business we have a part to play in closing this gap and improving the gender balance in our sector. We believe we can achieve our mission through our values, first and foremost with our people. At CMS, we pride ourselves on our growth mindset and investing in the personal development of our people. We strive to provide equal opportunities for everyone to grow and progress.
Job Grading
To improve development opportunities for our people, in 2019 we introduced Job Grading with an external software from Willis Towers Watson. This system ensures we have a consistent, systematic approach to defining the relative level of roles at CMS. It identifies gaps in our structure and helps us to find development opportunities for new roles or layers within a team, and ensures we are fairly and consistently assessing how different job roles compare with each other. We can use this information to support and develop our future leaders and experts as well as to support bench marking and salary reviews.
The Job Grading system is centred around the requirements and responsibilities of the job role – not the ability of the individual. This process ensures we remain impartial when we put people in the relevant job role concerning their skills. Building on our progress so far, we are proud to report our Gender Pay Gap for the first time as a positive step to continue our journey of being a transparent, inclusive, and equal workplace. Moving forward, the powerful data from our latest will report will help us to ensure our job grading framework supports our goals.
Our Next Steps
Evete Medeiros, Chief People Officer
"At CMS we are continually evolving our people strategy to strive for a diverse and inclusive workforce. The Gender Pay Gap allows us to measure our progress over time and ensure we make commitments as a business on this topic. Growing and developing our people is at the heart of what we do, and ensuring we have equitable development opportunities is vital for our organisation.
In response to our report, we look to prioritise diversity and inclusion so it can be embedded into our company culture. We will continue to promote our job grading structure and the progressions of women in our organisation as part of our commitment to improve our Gender Pay Gap.
In addition, we are exploring options for our Senior Leadership Team to attend external diversity and unconscious bias training. Moreover, we endeavour to launch an Employee Network Group for women in the business and provide them with valuable training opportunities to help them grow and develop in their careers. Finally, we will create and publish an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion policy to ensure we have a clear stance on the topic, accessible to our people."
