Introduction of targets to get more women in senior management. Commitment to introduce gender pay reports in RB’s top five countries.
Slough, UK – April 2, 2019 - In conjunction with its 2nd UK Gender Pay Report, RB announces today two significant steps to transform Diversity & Inclusion at the company.
At RB we believe gender equality is not just a moral imperative, it is good for business too. Our complete focus is to increase the numbers of women in RB’s leadership and decision making. While men and women at the same level have the same earning opportunity, we still have more males than females in senior management roles and there is an opportunity to make a step change here.
RB’s UK gender pay performance shows a median gender pay gap of -4.5% in favour of RB’s female colleagues. This compares with a UK national picture for 2018 that showed a full and part time median gender pay gap of 17.9% in favour of males. Our median gender bonus gap has improved slightly to 25.2% from 29.7% which is still too great a gap because it reflects the fact that we have more men at the top of the organisation than women.
But we recognise that much more needs to be done. Our first initiative is to establish targets and by 2022, RB’s global ambition is to double the numbers of women in senior management positions to 40% from a 2016 baseline of 20%. In 2018, 25% of our senior management positions globally were held by women.
The second initiative, is a commitment to increase accountability and report on gender pay in our top five markets around the globe. This represents nearly 50% of our global workforce who are based in the USA, the UK, China, India and Mexico. This is the first commitment by a FTSE company to go beyond the UK reporting requirement.
Rakesh Kapoor, Chief Executive of RB, commented: “While I am proud that our median pay gap is positive and that pay levels between men and women are at parity, I recognise that we should do more to increase the numbers of senior female leaders in our business not just in the UK but globally. Our new RB Hull facility is a great example where our R&D senior management team is 44% female. In a meritocratic organisation like RB, targets run contrary to our culture, but now I believe it is the right thing to do to ensure the business doubles the number of women in senior positions by 2022. Together these two initiatives will, we believe, help to prioritise what we all knows needs to be a truly high-performance and inclusive business.”