UK gender pay gap
The UK gender pay gap is a measure of financial gender equality that highlights any average-earnings disparity.
Accenture UK 2023 Gender Pay Gap Data Published 4 April 2024
Accenture's purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Our strategy is to deliver 360° value for all our stakeholders by helping them continuously reinvent. To drive reinvention, innovation must be at the forefront, which requires us to attract, develop and inspire top talent. Talent is one of our most important areas of competitive differentiation. As part of our talent strategy, we hire and develop people who have different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different lived experiences. These differences ensure that we have and attract the cognitive diversity to deliver a variety of perspectives, observations, and insights which are essential to drive the innovation needed to reinvent.
We recognise that some people come to Accenture having faced obstacles as an aspect of their identity or lived experience. At Accenture, we are committed to harness these perspectives and ensure that all of our people have the opportunity to thrive and unlock their full potential.
As we report on our gender pay gap, we are encouraged that despite a slight rise in median pay gap, we experienced a drop in our mean gender pay gap.
Our current pyramid of talent means that we have more men in senior positions due to the historic underrepresentation of women within our sector. Our leadership level hires are now 53% women, our senior managing director group is now 18.6% women, and our UK Executive team is now 45% women.
In addition, we have no attrition gap for our women, with a positive difference of +0.7% which demonstrates the success of our efforts to retain and progress female talent. It is also important to note that as of our last review on 1 December 2023, we have pound for pound, 100% pay equity for women compared to men in the UK.
We have learned from experience that a continued focus on getting the fundamentals right is core to reducing the gender pay gap. This means retaining our focus on a gender balance in early talent recruitment, together with striving for increased representation of women at all career levels
Our data is influenced by several factors including attrition, recruitment, and our broader growth strategy, and it changes every year. This is my first year leading Accenture’s UK business, and I am pleased with our progress as we work toward continued improvement.
We treat inclusion and diversity like every other business priority. Our intention is to foster a culture and a workplace in which all of our people feel a sense of belonging and are respected and empowered to do their best work and to create 360° value for all our stakeholders. To achieve this we set goals, share them publicly, and collect data to measure our progress, continuously improve, and hold our leaders accountable for ensuring we have the most innovative and talented people in our industry. This approach is a key driver of our progress. We share the progress toward our goals because we believe transparency builds trust.
Thank you,
Shaheen
Shaheen Sayed
Market Unit Lead – UKI
What is the gender pay gap?
The UK gender pay gap is a measure of financial equality that highlights the differences between the average earnings of men and women. Identifying this figure is an important step on the path to eliminating gender-based pay disparity, creating equality in the median and mean of men and women’s pay, and setting our standards higher by committing to do better. The gender pay gap is different to equal pay, which means paying the same to men and women doing comparable work, which has been a legal requirement since the UK Equal Pay Act of 1970. We conduct an annual pay equity review and as of our last review on 1 December 2023, we have pound for pound, 100% pay equity for women compared to men in the UK.
The full details of Accenture’s gender gap pay are published in the table below and are calculated on salary data from 5 April 2023.
This year’s data is segmented into three cuts to represent Accenture UK Limited, our largest entity in the UK, and Accenture Marketing Services Limited, as well as the combined figures for both entities together. Legislation compels us to provide separate data for any legal entity that employs over 250 people. Accenture UK Limited's median gender pay gap is 16.7% compared with the UK median of 14.3%; Accenture Marketing Services Limited's median gender pay gap is 22.8%; and the combined figure is 16.9%.
What is Accenture doing about its gender pay gap?
Changing the gender balance across our workforce is a long-term process. While we have a higher percentage of men than women in senior management, we have focused on gender balanced recruiting at our entry levels and ensuring development and sponsorship throughout their career journeys. Recruiting and retaining women at junior levels carries a risk of bringing down the average rate of pay of women in the short term, but it is a foundational step in building a pipeline of leaders for the future.
We continue our focus on targeted gender-based training and recruitment initiatives to ensure that we bring the next generation of female leaders into our organisation and to ensure that they feel supported and prioritised when they are with us through targeted investment and supports.
Beyond Accenture, we are deeply committed to driving societal change, helping to address systemic issues across the United Kingdom that impact gender equality, such as the lack of deep technology skills and training (particularly in critical areas such as AI), childcare, and menopause health provision.
Making our organisation and our society better places for everyone is what drives us to support our people every day.
Gender pay gap and unequal
pay – what’s the difference?
Unequal pay
Is paying men and women differently for doing comparable work. This has been unlawful in the UK since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970.
Gender pay gap
Is the difference between the median and mean of men's and women's pay more generally – across the UK, a sector or an entire company. We aim to close this within a generation.