Triodos Bank’s mission is to make money work for positive change in society. We are in business to help create a society that promotes the quality of life for all its members on a thriving planet, with human dignity at its core. To be successful in the delivery of our mission, we see the nurturing of diverse talent and equality of opportunity across the bank as essential. This is underpinned by having an inclusive culture that is strongly promoted internally amongst our co-workers.

We see the gender pay gap as a critical part of our wider ED&I activity and value the role this metric has in monitoring our progress and holding ourselves accountable. We’re pleased to report that our overall gender pay gap has decreased this year, although we know that there is still more work to be done.

We acknowledge that the current requirements of gender pay reporting is undertaken in a binary way, recognising only men and women, and that non-binary or other identities are not reported on in this report. We also recognise that there are other gaps that all employers should be working to close – including disability and ethnicity – and we are currently working to gather ED&I data from our co-workers to enable us to report on this in the future.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women across an organisation. The gender pay gap is different to unequal pay, which is paying men and women differently for performing the same (or similar) work.

Since 2017, any UK business with 250 or more employees is required to report on its gender pay gap; taking an annual snapshot of any differences and publishing this externally, as both a mean (an average) and median (the ‘middle wage’) metric. The UK was one of the first countries to introduce this reporting requirement with the aim of understanding and narrowing the pay gap between men and women.

This is the second year Triodos has been required to publish its pay gap, but the bank has monitored it voluntarily since 2018 and published internally.

What is Triodos’ gender pay gap?

In summary, our pay gap has decreased this year in both the mean and median metrics.

These figures are based on the average amount paid to men and women at Triodos Bank UK, regardless of their seniority or whether they work full-time or part-time.

“This is an important element of our wider Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy and we know that it will take time to reach our goal of a 0% pay gap, but we are committed to realising this ambition. We have more to do and will continue to work towards building an inclusive workplace that prioritises gender balance across all parts of Triodos Bank UK,” Karen adds.

How do Triodos’ results compare to other banks and financial institutions?

In 2022, the Office for National Statistics reported that the average gender pay gap for financial services was 28.5% (mean) and 31.7% (median). The provisional gap reported for 2023 is 24.7% (mean) and 27.9% (median).

We are pleased that Triodos’ results continue to compare favourably within the UK financial services industry.

What is causing our gender pay gap?

Since we began monitoring our pay gap in 2018, we have maintained a good overall gender balance with roughly half of Triodos’ co-workers identifying as male and the other half as female. The overall gender split of our co-workers in April 2023 (snapshot date) was 53% female co-workers and 47% male.

In 2023, we saw a significant increase of women within our upper middle quartile and a small decrease of women in our lower quartile, both have helped to narrow our pay gap this year. However, we have unfortunately seen a decrease of women within our upper quartile this year. Analysis shows the male:female ratio is mainly driven by a higher number of male candidates being externally recruited.

2023 pay quartile percentages by gender

What is Triodos doing to address the gap?

We see addressing our gender pay gap as a long-term journey and we’re committed to putting a plan in place to work towards our aspiration of a 0% gap.

We continue to make improvements to our recruitment process, from how we advertise our roles and ensure they are inclusive and unbiased, to delivering unconscious bias training for hiring managers.

To go further, we are collecting EDI data to enable us to measure and understand the makeup of our co-worker community. This will allow us to adopt a more data-driven approach and will provide insights into the intersectional considerations of any inclusion practices at Triodos.

Female co-worker development has been a key focus with the creation of our RISE group to support women within our middle management population. We are launching a development programme in May 2024 designed for women which will cover self-confidence, assertiveness, influence and personal brand. We have continued to be a corporate sponsor of Women in Banking and Finance and provide membership to female co-workers.

We have reviewed our family leave policy and have increased the length of paid time off co-workers can take. We have also made it more inclusive by introducing paid time off for both parents for fertility treatment, additional paid time if a baby is born prematurely and updated our paternity leave to be named partner’s leave. Flexible and hybrid working continues to be embedded across the bank, supporting co-workers to balance work and home commitments.

Reflecting on these measures, Catherine Ridd, our HR director, commented: “I’m pleased to see the progress we’ve made towards decreasing our gender pay gap further. Our co-worker community are key to the success of the bank and it’s important that our workforce reflects our customers and the communities we operate in, so we can achieve our mission of creating a society that promotes quality of life and human dignity for all its members. As well as this, we’re committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone feels they belong, are valued and can thrive in their work.

“Improved data will help us to better understand, measure and track our progress moving forward across all areas – gender, ethnicity, disability etc – and we remain committed to continue on this direction of travel and reach our ambition of removing the gender pay gap completely.”