H&M gender pay disparity
Clothing retailer H&M’s latest gender pay report has shown the gap in both median and mean figures is well below those of both the UK retail and wider industries.
The company’s median pay gap was 3.94%, compared with the retail average of 9.3% and the UK average of 18.4%, and its mean pay gap figure was 8% compared with the retail average of 16.4% and the UK average of 17.4%.
The group said any difference highlighted by the report was not due to a disparity in pay between women and men in the organisation but due to the structure of its workforce, as “78% of our employees are female”.
In an official statement made on its gender pay figures, H&M said: “Supported by our salary benchmarking project we are continuing to identify and eradicate any known differences between genders working in the same role.
“The H&M group is fully committed to treating all our employees equally, no matter what their gender, background, ethnicity or race and as such we believe that there should be no structural differences in compensation between genders.”
By April 2018 all employers will be required to publish their mean and median gender pay gap figures and the proportion of men and women in each quartile of the pay structure.
