Triodos Bank and the gender pay gap

Triodos Bank’s mission is to help create a thriving society that promotes quality of life for all. To be successful in the delivery of our mission we see nurturing diverse talent and equality of opportunity across the Bank as essential. This is underpinned by having an inclusive culture, which is strongly promoted amongst our co-workers.

We see the gender pay gap as a critical part of our wider ED&I activity and value the role that this metric has in monitoring our progress and holding ourselves accountable.

We recognise that there are other pay gaps that all employers should be working to close – including around disability and ethnicity – and while we’re not reporting on these currently, we hope to monitor these in the future.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women across an organisation. The gender pay gap is different to unequal pay, which is paying men and women differently for performing the same (or similar) work where the reason is their sex.

Since 2017, any UK business with 250 employees or more has been required to report on its gender pay gap, taking a yearly snapshot of any difference and publishing this externally, as both a mean (an average) and median (the ‘middle wage’) metric. The UK was one of the first countries to bring in this reporting requirement, introducing it with the aim of understanding and narrowing the pay gap between men and women.

Historically, Triodos has not been required to publish its pay gap, but the bank has monitored it voluntarily since 2018. Now, with over 250 employees in the UK, we’ll need to report as a legal requirement from 2023 onwards.

What is Triodos’ gender pay gap?

In summary, our pay gap has increased this year in both the mean and median metrics.

These figures are based on the average amount paid to men and women at Triodos in the UK, regardless of their seniority, or whether they work full or part time.

Commenting on the results, Catherine Ridd, acting director of HR, said: “Reporting on our gender pay gap is an important moment for us to reflect on the changes that we’ve made as an organisation to encourage a diverse workforce – while also considering what more we can do. It is disappointing that our pay gap has widened over the past year and we know that it can take time for the action we take to impact, but we are committed to continue with the plan we’ve put in place to narrow the gap.”

How do Triodos’ results compare to other banks and financial institutions?

In 2021, the average gender pay gap for financial services was 29.5% (mean) and 33.2% (median).

Whilst we are pleased that Triodos’ results compare favourably to this, we aren’t satisfied. We recognise that the increase in our pay gap isn’t what we’d like to see and that we need to take further action to support our female co-workers, as we work towards our long-term goal of a 0% gap.

What is causing our gender pay gap?

Triodos’ pay gap exists largely because there is an uneven distribution of men and women across our pay grades. We have a higher proportion of females in lower paid roles and fewer women in our most senior pay grades. Additionally, our monitoring shows that it takes longer for female co-workers to progress in their careers, moving into roles in our upper pay brackets.

Since we began monitoring our pay gap in 2018, we have maintained a good overall gender balance, with roughly half of Triodos’ employees identifying as male and half female. The data also shows that co-workers in our middle pay-bracket, those likely to progress into senior leadership roles, have consistently had a very small pay gap.

What is Triodos doing to address the gap?

The bank views addressing our gender pay gap as a long-term journey and so, although the gender pay gap isn’t yet decreasing, we’re committed to sharing our results and putting in place a plan to address their cause. We’ve already begun working on improving our recruitment process and supporting more women to be ready to step into more senior roles at the bank. Within this work, we are looking at our co-worker talent development processes, seeing how we can best support female co-workers to meet their development needs and ensure they can continue to grow within the bank.

Importantly we’ll monitor the success of these actions, through our continued reporting, to ensure they are having the needed impact and helping us to move the gap in the right direction. This begins with the article and will continue as we report our 2022 figures by March 2023.

Reflecting on these measures, Karen Furlong, Triodos non-executive board member and sponsor of the gender pay gap reporting, said: “Triodos is a values-led organisation which is committed to transparency and sustainability, including in relation to our GPG. By working to remove barriers to progression and supporting female careers at Triodos we aim to achieve gender balance at all levels within the organisation which ultimately will benefit co-workers, the Bank and our customers.”