Gender Pay Gap Report 2021

The Gender Pay Gap regulations require companies to report their gender pay gap for all legal entities in Great Britain with more than 250 employees.

The gender pay gap shows the difference in average pay between women and men. It does not measure equal pay, which relates to what women and men are paid for the same or similar jobs or work of equal value. Our approach to pay is gender neutral and our analysis confirms that our pay gap is driven by the structure of our workforce.

The regulations require the pay gap figures to be reported in two ways – (i) as a mean and (ii) as a median.  The mean calculates the total amount earned across an organisation, divided by the number of people employed. The median looks at the pay of all the people in the range and identifies the mid-point, removing any distorting impacts at either end of the range. 

How We Calculate Mean and Median Pay Difference

As required by the UK legislation, we are publishing data for the one legal entity that employs more than 250 people, St James Group Limited. We also feel it is important to show the total picture for the Berkeley Group which employed approximately 2,700 people across its business in the UK, regardless of employing entity, and are therefore also voluntarily publishing consolidated data for the entire Group.

Berkeley's Gender Pay Statistics

We included all relevant employees under the regulations as at 5 April 2021 when calculating the figures below. The salary data includes base salary and certain allowances in line with the government guidelines, whilst bonus figures include total variable pay over the previous 12 months (bonus, commissions and other incentives paid, plus vesting of Long Term Incentive Plan awards).  

The mean pay gap for both the Group and St James for 2020 includes the effects of temporary Covid-19 salary reductions implemented in April 2020, which reduced the pay on a graduated basis with the pay of senior management reduced by 20%.  These reductions were reversed in August 2020 after four months for the majority of staff, and October 2020 after six months for the Main Board.

Understanding Our Pay Gap

The median pay gap for the Group is 34.6%. Like much of our industry, this is primarily driven by the shape of our workforce, with a lower proportion of women in senior, higher paid roles, and more women occupying junior, lower paid roles, alongside Berkeley’s strategy for procurement whereby construction labour is procured through subcontractor packages and not directly employed.  

The shape of our workforce also impacts our bonus gap, with our senior executives participating in the Company’s Long Term Incentive Plans. 

Addressing the Gap

Berkeley is committed to paying for performance equally and fairly, and rewarding and retaining our best people. We are already taking steps that will increase the proportion of women within Berkeley as a whole, recognising the desire in the Group to promote from within and therefore providing increased opportunities for career progression within the organisation and to more senior roles over the long-term.

Central to this is to recruit and retain a high calibre workforce and in 2021 we launched two new commitments within Our Vision, Berkeley's long-term strategy, to help achieve this.

The first focus area is ‘Employee Experience’ which will see us place a specific focus on several areas, including employee experience and diversity and inclusion. 

There is a historic under-representation of women in our industry and we believe there are real benefits in ensuring diverse views, skills and perspectives which can lead to creative thinking and more effective problem solving. We have committed to focusing on creating an engaged and inclusive environment by developing guiding principles and seeking to attract and retain a diverse workforce. 

We have implemented enhanced maternity and paternity policies, with the view of attracting and retaining more women. In addition to this, we have introduced a more agile approach to working to attract and retain a more diverse pool of talent. 

In addition to these initiatives, as a business we understand the importance of recruiting responsibly to help with the progression of women within the business. We have undertaken a full review of our recruitment processes and adapted our experienced hire application journey to make the candidate experience more inclusive and streamlined. 75% of all hires that have come through our internal recruitment team are female, filling roles with a range of seniority across multiple disciplines. 

A focus has also been placed on the importance of gender diversity on interview panels. As a result an increased number of females have been included in the graduate recruitment assessment process to provide better gender balance and to act as ambassadors for women in the industry.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is also at the core of our values.  All staff receive a suite of health and wellbeing benefits and those that have been in the business for two years are eligible for a free comprehensive health check that includes tests specific to female health such as breast cancer screening. 

Recruiting females into the business is a key step to addressing the gap but to strengthen the output we have also committed to increasing the level of women in management positions to 33% by 2026 to be more representative of our overall workforce. 

Our second commitment focuses on ‘Future Skills’ looking at how we can create tangible long term change within the industry. 

Our graduate scheme continues to target a balanced intake each year, aiming to identify the next generation of leaders within the organisation, and this year we have seen 36% of positions filled by female candidates.  This will naturally take a period of time but we are investing for the long term. We are also focused on providing apprenticeships and in 2021 we hired our largest intake of production apprentices of which 24% were female, significantly above the national average for such roles.

We have a number of affiliations with companies that promote women to work in the built environment. We have enhanced a long standing relationship with Women into Construction by becoming a Platinum Member and are a founding partner for the Mayor’s Fund for London Firm Foundations diversity pledge.

We confirm that the data reported is accurate.

Rob Perrins | Chief Executive, Berkeley Group
Richard Stearn | Finance Director, Berkeley Group