POhWER Gender Pay Gap Report 5th April 2025

POhWER is a charity which helps people who, because of disability, illness, social exclusion and other challenges, find it difficult to express their views or get the support they need.

Our report for 5 April 2025 shows the following:

• Our gender split based on 398 employees is 76% (302) female employees and 24% (96) male employees.
• The mean (average) gender pay gap in hourly pay as a percentage of men’s pay is 1.7% with female employees earning £14.78 and male employees earning £15.04.
• The median gender pay gap in hourly pay as a percentage of men’s pay is -2.06% with female employees earning £13.88 and male employees earning £13.60 per hour.
• The mean (average) gender pay gap for bonuses is 7.06% with the average bonus payment for female employees being £306 and for male employees £329.31.
• The median gender pay gap for bonuses is 0% as the average bonus payment for both female and male employees is £357.27.

This compares to our results reported in 2024, with the mean pay gap moving from -7.11% to 1.7% and the median pay gap moving from -1.91% to 2.06%.  No bonus payments were made during the previous year therefore there is no comparison to be made.

For the first time since we have recorded this data, the mean pay gap is favourable towards males. There is a small change in the median pay gap which remains as favourable towards females which was the same last year.

There has been a 2% increase in the employee headcount from 390 employees in 2024 to 398 employees in 2025.  The gender balance which has moved from 79% to 76% for females and 21% to 24% for males from 2024 to 2025 respectively.

Narrative

POhWER remains committed to keeping the gender pay gap at or close to zero in line with our values and beliefs that everyone who works for POhWER should be treated equitably.

POhWER has a higher proportion of female employees compared to males which is typical of the charity sector. The average split across the charity sector is 68% females and 32% males and in the working population in general 54% are female and 46% male (ONS statistics).  POhWER has disproportionately more female employees than the work force as a whole and charity specifically. 

During the year, six of the nine employees (67%) in leadership positions within the POhWER executive team and associate directors were held by women. The male: female split has changed slightly since 2024, whereby there were previously seven females out of a total of nine which represented 78%.

To better reflect the diversity of our service users and working population, during the year 2024-2025 we have:

1. Signed up to honour the Armed Forces Covenant and support the Armed Forces Community with a guaranteed interview for recruitment. We anticipated that this reached a population with a higher percentage of males especially Veterans. It also includes Serving Personnel, both Regular and Reservists, and military families.  The number of males in our workforce has increased and we will investigate whether the increase is because of increases in armed forces connected workers. The access to data has been limited to date however with a new proposed recruitment system, we will have the ability to track the source of each candidate.
   
   
2. For recruitment, we introduced equality commitment statements to our job adverts.
   
   
3. During the year, we introduced equality impact assessments for people policies, practices and projects.  These tools have focused our attention on practices where employees may be at an advantage or a disadvantage based on their sex and enables us to identify other actions to put in place.

We continued to monitor people data by sex and review whether we need to take action to address imbalances.  In addition, we will monitor the different gender identities including non-binary and trans.

This year we will review and update our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy and the action plan.  We expect to implement an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Forum made up of senior leadership and representatives from our networking groups. They will support the development of the EDI policy and consider the EDI impact of other policies. They will advise on the impact of decisions on EDI and feedback on how people feel we are progressing.

Mean and median bonuses

During the year, 321 bonus payments were awarded as below: 

• 258 were female which represented 80% of all bonus payments awarded.
• 63 were male which represented 20% of all bonus payments awarded.

The bonus payment was a fixed amount calculated on a pro-rata basis for part time employees.

Quartile pay bands

The following information shows the four quartile pay bands and the proportion of male and female employees within each band:

• Lower quartile: total 143 employees whereby 35 (24%) are male and 108 are female (76%).
• Lower middle: total 57 employees whereby 16 (28%) are male and 41 (72%) are female.
• Upper middle:  total 98 employees whereby 20 (20%) are male and 78 (80%) are female.
• Upper quartile: total 100 employees whereby 25 (25%) are male and 75 (75%) are female.

The total number of employees is 398 with 302 (76%) female and 96 (24%) male.

The above information has been calculated and verified as an accurate representation of the Gender Pay Gap Reporting that is required for 5 April 2025.