L&Q publishes diversity and fair pay reports
Forming part of our proactive effort to ensure a more inclusive, equal and diverse workforce, today we publish our diversity and fair pay reports for the year 2021/22.
The diversity report is a snapshot of L&Q’s staff body from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 and documents the progress made in the areas of diversity and inclusion, as well as future initiatives planned to continue improving colleague representation.
Our recruitment, promotion and retention figures show parity with the staff body and the areas we draw our people from.
Our broad colleague base is representative of the demographic makeup of the areas we draw our colleagues from, except for our lower disability representation.
Whilst disability representation is low at L&Q compared to the overall working population, this has been on an upward trajectory since 2018, and disability representation is maintained at a senior leadership level.
As we continue to align L&Q with Trafford Housing Trust (THT), we have combined the senior teams of both organisations over the past year: senior THT colleagues made up 66% of appointments to Senior Leadership roles.
The THT colleague base is less ethnically diverse, impacting ethnic minority representation for the merged senior team.
We have strong LGBT+ representation at L&Q which is replicated at a senior leadership level.
We have a diverse Group Board and a good mix of representation across different demographics.
The diversity section of the Great Places to Work index has been the highest scoring area of the index for the past four years.
Our latest fair pay report presents our gender, ethnicity and disability pay gap for the year 2021/22.
The report demonstrates a fall in gender pay gaps across L&Q, L&Q Living (LQL) and Trafford Housing Trust (THT) as more women are accessing higher-paid roles. The median gender pay gap at L&Q stands at 7.12% down from 9.6% last year.
Our reporting exceeds the regulatory requirements which relate to gender only, as we extend the pay gap analysis to disability and ethnicity. In publishing our disability pay reporting, we have joined the minority of organisations that currently do so.
The median ethnicity pay gap is at 1.26% in our latest report. There is an ongoing, very low ethnicity pay gap due to ethnic minority colleagues accessing higher paid and senior roles in the organisation.
This year’s figures show a widening positive disability pay gap due to an increase in declarations of senior colleagues sharing their disability status with us.
The fair pay report sets out the steps we are taking to reduce legacy pay inequalities, from setting targets for our talent development programmes to working with Enhance the UK to providing disability awareness training to colleagues and user-led accessibility audits of our buildings.
Tom Nicholls, Executive Group Director of HR at L&Q said:
“As a values-driven organisation, our goal is to be bold and intentional in taking action to better support underrepresented people in our workforce.
Building a home requires vision and constant revision. We’re continually iterating, examining data-driven outcomes, and learning from both our successes and failures. Our focused efforts in diversity and inclusion are no different.
Since our last reports, we’ve built on what we’ve learned to increasingly make L&Q a place that better represents and embraces the diversity of our communities. We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made but acknowledge there is still room for improvement.
Data is an important part of our diversity story, and we remain committed to creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace, where different perspectives drive our actions.”