Gender Pay Gap Report – 2021

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 job 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 a reduction in the mean gender pay gap for this year. Iceland’s mean gender pay gap is standing at 8.66% with the median gender pay standing at 10.00%. Our mean gender pay gap has reduced by 4.57% since April 2017. We recognise however, that our median gender pay gap has increased slightly for this year compared to last year. This can be explained by looking at the mix of men and women employed across our business.

The more senior roles attract a higher salary whilst the hourly paid positions attract a lower salary. If we were to line our colleagues up by gender and take the middle person from each group, this would give us median figure. As we have more females employed in hourly paid positions this has impacted our midpoint figure.

Overall however, we are pleased to see an improvement in the gender balance within our management structure through our apprenticeship schemes and our senior talent progression programmes.

This year all our hourly paid colleagues participated in an additional bonus scheme which recognised their continued support throughout the pandemic. Whilst we are pleased to report a reduction in the median bonus gap this additional payment impacted the mean bonus gap. This again is largely down to the mix of men and women in the business.  We have a larger population of women employed in our hourly paid positions receiving the bonus which had the overall effect of reducing the average bonus figure.

Pleasingly, 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 7.52%. The balance between men and women employed in hourly paid positions has largely remained the same, with more women than men continuing to work in these roles

We recognise that whilst our mean gender pay gap has 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.

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

2020 Gender Pay Gap Report