New research shows female workers earn £12k less than male counterparts

A new way of measuring how much men and women are paid under government reporting requirements have revealed that the gender pay gap for the UK’s 3.3m managers is nearly £3,000 bigger than previously understood.

According to analysis of manager salaries conducted by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and XpertHR, the gender pay gap as calculated under the new regulations stands at 26.8 per cent, with male managers on average out-earning female peers by over £11k per year.

CMI’s chief executive, Ann Francke, said: “Too many businesses are like ‘glass pyramids’ with women holding the majority of lower-paid junior roles and far fewer reaching the top.

“We now see those extra perks of senior management roles are creating a gender pay gap wider than previously understood. The picture is worst at the top, with male CEOs cashing in bonuses six times larger than female counterparts.”

Just last year, the pay gap - based on managers’ basic salaries - stood at 23.1 per cent, or £8,964. This is the first time that pay gap data compiled by XpertHR has been published taking into account new rules in which the government began in April 2017.

This was set to make large employers (250+ employees) publicly disclose the size of their gender pay gap. As of September 22, only 77 out of 7,850 UK companies have done so.

The analysis suggested that, while pay rises are picking up for both men and women, the benefit are mainly offered to males, who picked up a 5.8 per cent increase in pay and bonuses opposed to females receiving 3.7 per cent.

XpertHR content director, Mark Crail, said: “We have always known that the gender pay gap appears to widen with seniority. But the results we are publishing today enable us to quantify the gap using a large volume of reliable, checked and verified pay data, drawn from payroll systems.”

He further explained that some people have suggested the pay gap as being the result of different working hours across several industries…

However Crail continued: “When the analysis is based on the pay more than 100k individuals in over 400 organisations, it is clear that the pay gap is a very real fact of life for UK managers.

According to research by management consultants McKinsey, closing the gender pay gap would add around £150bn per year to the UK economy by 2025.

Then with the economy in need of 1.9m new managers by 2024, 1.5m of those would have to be women in order to achieve such balance.