Gender Pay Gap Report 2023

About us:

Iceland Foods is a unique British food retailer with around 1000 stores throughout the UK, further owned or franchised stores across Europe and a global export business. We employ over 24,000 colleagues across our Iceland and Food Warehouse, with a further 1000 colleagues employed from our Head Office in Deeside, North Wales.

Any UK business employing more than 250 employees must publicly report on the difference in pay between its male and female employees. This is known as the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is different to equal pay. Equal pay compares the salary of men and women in jobs of equal value; whilst the gender pay gap shows the difference in the average earnings between all men and women in the entire organisation regardless of what role they undertake. UK Government requirements dictate that the reporting is based on male and female genders only, though we acknowledge that some of our colleagues may identify otherwise.

Iceland is committed to equal opportunity in recruitment and employment irrespective of gender. Our entire pay principles are based on the skills required to deliver in role and our desire to attract and retain talent within the organisation.

Our pay system spans all salary bands ranging from operational to managerial level across all our Iceland and Food Warehouse stores and at our head office in Deeside.

We are committed to a continual improvement gender balance throughout our business enabled by inclusive people policies and processes. These are kept in review to ensure that they remain relevant, and we will regularly involve our colleagues in this process to ensure their voices are heard.

We are pleased to report that not only does our gender pay gap continue to sit below the national average, but we have also seen a reduction in both our mean and median pay gaps in comparison to last year. Iceland’s mean gender pay gap is standing at 9.33% with the median gender pay gap standing at 8.76%. We also welcome the 3.78% reduction in the percentage difference between men and women in our highest paying roles, which reflects the increase in numbers of female colleagues in our higher paid roles.

Whilst our mean gender bonus gap did see a slight increase compared to the previous year, we are pleased to report that the median gender bonus gap dropped significantly by 30.36%. This is because one of our bonus schemes is an annual incentive for top performing stores and for 2023 there was a higher proportion of male managers who won this incentive. However, all other colleagues in these stores would have also received a prize as a result of this, which would have been equally shared across both male and female colleagues, and is why we have seen this reduction in the median bonus gap.

Overall, we have seen a move in the proportion of women receiving a bonus to being very similar to, and actually slightly greater than, the proportion of men receiving a bonus. This is a positive sign that our journey to achieving a gender balance in bonus payments is going in the right direction.

Seeing a reduction in both our mean and median gender pay gaps is another positive step in what is a continuous journey of improvement. However, we are conscious that this is something we cannot be complacent towards, and so we are committed to driving this positive change on an ongoing basis.

I confirm that our data is accurate and has been calculated in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.

Tarsem Dhaliwal
Chief Executive Officer

2022 Gender Pay Gap Report