Wellcome Trust’s gender pay gap improves slightly to 17 per cent 

25 Jul 2018 News

The offices of the Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest charitable foundation

The Wellcome Trust’s gender pay gap has improved slightly from over 20 per cent last year to 17.4 per cent this year, according to its figures published yesterday. 

This means that its gender pay gap is now slightly better than the UK average of 18.4 per cent. 

However, when it comes to bonus pay, the Wellcome Trust’s gap is much higher than most organisations, with men earning an average of 82.6 per cent more than women. This is largely down to the long-term incentive scheme for the charity's investment team, which is mostly male. 

Since April, all organisations with more than 250 employees have been required to publish their gender pay gaps each year. In advance of this deadline, the Wellcome Trust first reported its pay gap last year.

The Trust had one of the highest gender pay gaps in the charity sector, with figures collected after April's deadline showing that charities which reported had a pay gap of 8 per cent in favour or men. 

Around two-thirds of the Wellcome Trust's employees are women, but most of its senior roles are held by men.  

Last year the medical research funder set out a number of steps to address the gap. This included collecting better data, staff training and introducing new ways of recruiting. 

Writing in the gender pay report, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: “Our median gender pay gap has improved from 20.8 per cent in 2017, when we first reported our data, but it is not possible to say whether this is part of a longer trend.

“And although we have begun to make changes to improve diversity and inclusion at Wellcome, it is too soon for these to have had a significant effect on our gender pay gap,”

So far this year the Trust has updated its diversity monitoring questions in an all-staff survey, and plans to roll out new training to all staff by summer 2019. 

Farrar added: “Our next priorities include building a workplace culture where parental and adoption leave is gender-neutral, and where flexible working is possible at all levels.

“Embedding diversity and inclusion in Wellcome’s culture will open us up to a wider range of voices, helping us make better decisions. In the longer term, it will bring more people together and help us achieve our mission of improving health for everyone.”

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