Reducing our pay gaps
Actions planned to reduce the gender and ethnicity pay gap
The university will also continue to operationalise the People and Culture Strategic Delivery Plan implementing initiatives to support the reduction of our pay gaps across leadership development, wellbeing, employee engagement, embedding values, performance measurement and reward mechanisms.
We will:
- Continue to carry out detailed and timely analysis of pay gap data for the next reporting period of April 2025, improving our approach to monitoring and reporting progress against our action plans.
- Review the University’s pay scales in line with Voluntary Living Wage (effective from 01 May 2025).
- Introduce a pay strategy that will set out how the University will use reward policies, practices and processes in a fair and equitable way to support reduction of our pay gaps.
- Continue to explore options to provide and embed reverse mentoring to enable senior staff to better understand the day-to-day experiences of more junior staff from diverse backgrounds which are currently underrepresented at senior levels (which contributes to the pay gaps) and offer promotions workshops to encourage reward applications from staff in underrepresented groups.
- Continue to review to refine recruitment processes to make these as inclusive as possible, including but not limited to considering where vacancies are promoted; how job descriptions are written; and how interviews are organised.
- Continue to review pay gap data at a faculty/department level to determine local trends which might be driving the university-level data and put local initiatives and success measures in place to address these as appropriate.
- Continue to support faculties with workforce planning considering underrepresented groups and initiatives to encourage improvements in representation.
Striving for balanced gender and ethnicity distribution across all levels
Athena Swan commitment - The Athena Swan charter encourages and recognises commitment to gender equality, including advancing the careers of women and experiences of trans staff and students in higher education and research. As the first institutional Athena Swan gold award holder, we are committed to embedding the Athena Swan principles within our policies, actions plans and working culture.
Race Equality Charter Commitment – The Race Equality Charter is designed to improve the representation, progression and success of racially minoritised staff and students within higher education. We want our staff to be confident that racial equality is taken seriously, and we achieved the Bronze Race Equality Charter in 2021.
This gives us a framework with which to identify, explore and consider issues affecting the representation, progression and success of racially minoritised staff at the university. We are committed to delivering the actions in our Race Equality Charter action plan and driving culture and process change institution wide.
We cannot reduce our pay gaps without having a culture which supports a diverse workforce and one where minoritised groups are included and treated equally. Our values include inclusivity, fairness, openness, ambition and respect, and we are working to embed these within everything we do.
EDI Annual Activity Report - This report summarises all the activities and achievements the university has undertaken over the past year, all of which help embed EDI into the university culture.
Disability Confident Scheme – The University of Nottingham is a registered Disability Confident committed (Level 2) employer. Increasing employee diversity is important to us and we are committed to the aims of the Disability Confident Scheme .
Last edited Mar 17, 2025