Gender Pay Gap Report – 2020

Any UK business employing more than 250 employees must publicly report on its 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.

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 administrative to managerial level across all our Iceland and Food Warehouse stores and at our head office in Deeside. We are committed to encouraging an improved gender balance throughout our business enabled by inclusive people policies and processes.

We are pleased to report significant reductions in the gender pay gap for this year. Iceland’s mean gender pay gap is standing at 10.18% with the median gender pay standing at 7.24%.

We continue to see an improvement in female representation at the most senior level and in the last year the gap between men and women employed in our highest paid roles has reduced by 9.14%. The difference between the number of men and women employed in hourly paid positions has also reduced however, we recognise that more women than men continue to work in these roles.

Our targeted bonus scheme applies equally regardless of gender. This year we report a reduction in the mean bonus gap of -12.89%. This means on average women received a higher bonus than men. The median gender gap however has seen a slight increase. This increase can be explained by looking at the mix of men and women employed across our business, as more men than women are employed in senior roles. If we were to line our colleagues up by gender and take the middle person from each group, this would give us median bonus figure. The commercial performance at a senior level resulted in more men in receipt of the bonus pay which impacted the midpoint figure.

We recognise that whilst our gender pay gap has significantly reduced year on year, we must continue to ensure that focus is maintained on this important area of equality. We continually look for new and innovative ways to improve our gender balance across the business and work hard to ensure that all colleagues have the opportunity to develop their careers irrespective of gender.

The mean gender pay gap is 10.18%
The median gender pay gap is 7.24%
The mean gender bonus gap is – 12.89%
The median gender bonus gap is 50.80%
The proportion of male employees receiving a bonus is 3.72%
The proportion of female employees receiving a bonus is 2.01%

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
Group Managing Director

2019 Gender Pay Gap Report