Mind the gap

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Inclusion and equality – whether in terms of gender, ethnicity or disability – have risen higher in our collective consciousness recently. From the post-Harvey Weinstein scandal #MeToo groundswell, and the more specific timeTo sexual harassment ad industry campaign, to better dialogue about mental health and the introduction of more explicit inclusion agendas in the workplace – it is being talked about, behavioural issues are being addressed and legislation introduced.

When the BBC was forced to publish the pay of its top presenters last year, few could have anticipated how quickly the story would shift from the rights and wrongs of public sector v commercial pay, to the staggering disparity between the salaries of men and women within the organisation – with the inevitable broader repercussions and discussions around gender pay gaps. 

Since April last year, employers in Britain with more than 250 staff have been required, by law, to publish their gender pay-gap data. This has included mean and median averages, gender bonus gaps, and the proportions of men and women receiving bonuses and featuring in each quartile of an organisation’s pay structure.

As part of the Market Research Society’s annual review of agencies’ financial performance, the gender pay-gap data for the larger agencies – based on their April 2018 financial returns – has been analysed by David Cahn, of Synygis Consulting. 

Of the 10,500-plus organisations that published their gender pay information, 32 were market research companies – and, of those, 25 published additional explanatory text on their websites.

Cahn points to a few common themes emerging from these additional texts, for example: most companies see the gender pay gap as part of the broader diversity and inclusion discourse; many companies were keen to stress that gender pay gap was not the same as equal pay; and most – but not all –firms expressed dissatisfaction at their current gap. 

The unweighted gender pay-gap hourly rate ‘mean of medians’ for the 32 market research companies is worse than that for all 10,513 organisations – 13.0% v 9.3%. The gender pay-gap bonus ‘mean of medians’ is much worse – 28.3% v 5.0%, although Cahn says that bonuses are more widespread among the 32 market research firms, both for men and women. 

Ahead of the game 

“The particular thing that interested me was where a company took the trouble to split out its interviewer force – which is a particular characteristic of the market research industry. They were able to show, quite clearly, that with one group of people who, by definition, are not very well paid, and predominantly made up of women – and another group where it’s mixed – you get a much healthier pay gap,” says Cahn. “Airlines have a similar issue. 

“I felt that was a good thing in the sense that it would enable people to report this as they have to, but in such a way that they don’t give misleadingly pessimistic figures. I think market research has a good story to tell about this, because its attitude to women has always been ahead of the game.”

With several figures being reported, Cahn says most attention should be paid to the median. “It works better because, if you had a few very highly paid people, that would shove the mean up, but it wouldn’t affect the median because you’re still choosing the salary in the middle,” he adds. “That’s why the Office of National Statistics went to the median, and I saw examples of people’s median being more realistic than their mean.”

Cahn also argues for studying the data by pay quartiles: “If you analyse by quartile and separate out fieldworkers, you’re not fiddling the figures – you’re just getting a better fix on stuff you can do something about. Kate Andrews, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, pointed out that publishing this data incentivised managers not to employ people in lower ranks and graduates, because it tends to widen the gap – looking at it in quartiles is one way of not falling into that trap.”

Among the market research agencies, Cahn gives special mention to NatCen for having one of the highest levels of female employment ( 65%) among agencies, employing both interviewers and office staff, and its mean (-5.0%) and median (-15.0%) gender gaps are positive.

NatCen’s explanatory notes point out: “A significant proportion of our employees are social scientists and, in part, the median and mean negative pay gap is influenced by the high proportion of female staff we employ in these posts. Additionally, we engage a high proportion of female staff in support roles in our Brentwood office.” 

Cahn also highlights Ipsos Mori and Kantar Media. “Ipsos Mori has a commendable median gap (-0.9%), but its mean gap ( 11.7%) and its bonus gaps (mean 56.1%, median 50.3%), are – it feels – still far too high,” he says in the report. 

“Kantar Media has a similar return: median gap (-12.7%); mean gap ( 3.5%); bonus gaps (mean 41.6%, median 38.0%), though its level of female employment ( 29%) is one of the lowest. In the absence of specific qualitative feedback for Kantar Media (WPP offered a general overview without commenting on individual companies), one can only assume that Kantar Media women – though in a minority – out-earn men at all levels of the business.” 

Ben Page, CEO of Ipsos Mori, welcomes the need to report gender pay gaps because of the focus it puts on the issue, and the company has been looking at the data to try to identify where the problems occur.

Balanced board 

“What we see is, we actually pay women slightly more than men until they’re about 35 to 40,” says Page. “What I’m trying to understand is why do I suddenly become prejudiced against women when they hit 35 to 40? 

“We do have more men in very senior roles, and that’s where the salaries are highest. As with a lot of British business, that is at the root of the problem. I’ve readjusted the board so it’s 50% men and women – and our Paris main board is balanced in terms of gender.”

Cahn found that the market research businesses were committed to overall gender equality and were consistently responding to the
pay gaps by setting up working groups and appointing individuals to tackle not just gender, but also broader inclusion issues. This has been the case at Ipsos Mori, too. 

“We’ve got a team of people looking at the gender pay gap, but also at diversity more generally. We’re looking at gender, ethnicity and there is some pressure to look at class,” says Page. 

“Ipsos Mori has been relatively successful among the big companies in the past few years, and we’re not only successful because of gender diversity, but because of our diversity much more broadly. We’ve got 120 nationalities and ethnicities here, and it’s definitely a strength.”

Finding more diverse talent becomes most difficult when searching for very specific jobs, however. 

“You want someone who’s a specialist in financial services research, or who’s got x years in shopper research – there will be more senior men than senior women available. How do you break out of that mould? That’s something we’re looking at,” Page explains.

“Every promotion and pay-rise round, we check to make sure men aren’t getting bigger pay rises than women. Because we don’t collect minute data on everybody, we don’t automatically know who has children – they’re not required to tell us. So there’s been some debate about collecting that, so we can do the analysis properly.”

While gender pay data and gap calculations bring this topic to the fore, overcoming the numerous issues that have led to that gap  require, as Page puts it, “hard graft” – working out policies and practices that mean women who take time off to have children aren’t penalised, and that the workforce feels fairly treated.

Some of the biggest gender pay gaps have been reported by larger American-owned businesses – most notably Gartner and Information Resources. However, Cahn thinks Gartner’s acquisition of CEB last year will “have a marked positive impact on its overall gender pay gap, as the two businesses have very different gender profiles”. 

Work/life balance 

Cahn’s analysis shows that, in most cases ( 17 out of 24 responses), having too few senior women – and, in particular, insufficient female representation in the top quartile of employees – was seen as the main cause of the gender pay gap. Organisations recognised that this was their responsibility, although some suggested the gender pay gap was positive, as it demonstrated the business was offering staff flexibility and work/life balance options, which may mean some women are on lower wages. 

This is only the start. Many businesses have stated that they are committed to unconscious-bias training, inclusion teams, and more. The Market Research Society is currently developing a template, supported by an MRS webinar, which will set out how to gather, analyse and report gender pay rates to help research organisations.

Jane Frost, CEO of MRS, says: “If we are to be a sector that retains the best talent, we must address inequality. Evidence such as this is important to create the impetus to change. MRS committed to publish this data when our first inclusion research identified pay parity as one of the barriers to inclusion in the sector. We do know that the issues are much wider than this and, with the support of Lightspeed, which conducted previous MRS inclusion research, will be repeating our research later this year. We will also continue to publish our analysis of the government data annually.”

This article was first published in the October 2018 issue of Impact.

Further details of the organisations’ gender pay gaps will be published in the next Research Live Report, which will be online in December and a copy circulated with January’s Impact.