Gender Pay Gap Report 2020

Coventry City Council is committed to creating a One Coventry approach which is to be a welcoming, inclusive workplace. We are moving to become an organisation with a culture that respects and values each other’s differences, promotes dignity, equality, diversity and inclusion whilst encouraging individuals to develop and maximise their true potential. Being a diverse and inclusive employer is one of our top priorities.

We want our employees to feel that they can be themselves at work, valued for the distinct perspectives that they bring and are able to go as far as their talents will take them – irrespective of their sex, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, disability, neurodiversity, learning difference, religion, belief or age.

Feeling included is good for us as individuals; it is good for teams and good for the people and the communities we serve across Coventry. It is therefore a disappointment to us that the Gender Pay Gap is a little larger than last year, although we note that our figures are no worse than for many of our comparator local authorities.

We continue to implement changes that will help lead to greater equalities both internally and in the recruitment of new staff; changes that will therefore improve the Gender Pay Gap figures in future years.

During the past year we have:

• implemented a new recruitment system that ensures a fully anonymised recruitment process
• supported several groups to complete sponsored qualifications, including Management Skills, Data Analysis and Project Management, spanning NVQ levels 2 to 7. Successful completion of these courses upskill and open new promotion opportunities for existing employees. As of November 2020: 69 have successfully completed and a further 225 are studying towards a qualification
• radically updated our flexible working policy to enable employees to work safely from home, including the provision of equipment to support setting up home workstations with computer screens, desks and office chairs in order to help meet the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic
• selected and are implementing a new data warehousing system with benefits that include the easier generation of equalities data and enables drill-down to the data for individual work areas

We are proud of the changes we have made so far and are committed to ensuring our gender pay gap remains a high priority.

We are aware that there is soon likely to be a need to calculate and report the Ethnicity Pay Gap and action is being taken to improve our ability to undertake this work.