In common with other NHS trusts and large organisations, Oxford Health will be reporting annually on the gender pay gap.

The challenge in our organisation, and across the UK, is to eliminate the gender pay gap.

This is different from equal pay, which deals with the pay difference between men and women who carry out the same or similar job: it is unlawful to pay people unequally because of their gender.

Our median hourly pay rate is already actually slightly higher for women than for men: the median hourly gender pay gap is -2.77%.

However, there is a mean hourly gender pay gap of 13.62% at Oxford Health, which is the fourth smallest pay gap amongst the 17 NHS trusts that have reported figures so far.

We are committed to reducing this gender pay gap as much as possible, and we will be putting an action plan in place to bring parity in what men and women earn at Oxford Health.

Highlights:
• Women make up about 80% of our workforce.
• The mean hourly pay rate for women is £15.84, and the median hourly pay rate is £14.56·
• The mean hourly pay rate for men is £18.34, and the median hourly rate is £14.17.
•  This equates to a mean gender pay gap of 13.62%, and a median gender pay gap of -2.77%.
• For staff employed on the Agenda for change terms, the mean gender pay gap is 2.08%, and the median gender pay gap is -4%.

Why is there a gender pay gap?
At Oxford Health, the gender pay gap is not because people doing the same jobs are being paid differently according to their gender (which would also be unlawful).

Instead, it is because more men than women have senior management roles. The mean gender pay gap for this group is 9.18%.

There are also more men than women in highest ‘Agenda for change’ pay bands: at pay band 1, only 22% of staff are men, but men make up 40% of staff at pay band 9. Similarly, there are more men in the highest quartile of pay.

Men also get higher bonus payments as part of the clinical excellence awards.

What is Oxford Health going to do?
• We will continue to monitor and review the gender pay gap.
• We will continue to monitor and review recruitment and promotion policies, to identify and remove any barriers for women.
• We will consider positive action where appropriate, and we will pay particular attention to senior appointments.
• We will continue to develop flexible working options and strategies to improve staff recruitment and retention, including supporting women returning to work after maternity or adoption leave.
• We will encourage female medics to apply for the clinical excellence award.
• We will also carry out similar pay gap analyses for other protected characteristics (such as race).

For more details, you can also read our full gender pay gap report.