IN OUR HEADS
March 28, 2024
Though we are pleased to see any improvement in our pay gap figures, the small improvement we’ve seen in the past year remains underwhelming. We are on the journey and while we have made inroads on some of our objectives set last year, there is much more work ahead of us to reach our goal.
The 2023 results are partially explained by our winning one of the biggest accounts in our sector in 2022. Within days of winning the account, we needed to TUPE, recruit, and onboard over 125 new staff members within weeks – growing by 25% overnight and immediately reshaping our composition, size and pay gaps. The required speed to meet client commitments did not accommodate the standards we wanted to hold ourselves to – and, in a sense, making us victims of our own success.
This experience highlighted to us the critical importance of reviewing and interrogating business norms and conventions for real inclusion as well as opportunities to build in equity measures. Not satisfied with only looking at our gender pay gap, in Q3 of 2023 we committed to applying an intersectional lens to understand and tackle our pay gaps on the basis of ethnicity as well as gender.
Undertaking this exercise has highlighted some key areas for improvement, as well as ways to better safeguard against pay gaps, should extraordinary events like a big account win occur in the future.
As we move into 2024, we have developed a comprehensive strategy to grow female and People of Color representation across all quartiles, with a specific focus on the Upper Quartiles. Our focus is comprised of the tactical, infrastructure and influencer measures detailed below. Some of these measures will have a more immediate effect while others will be longer tail endeavors. We are confident that they will culminate in a more inclusive and equitable working environment where everyone can thrive.
We are steadfast in our commitment to closing our pay gaps. We continue to interrogate our data, quantitively as well as qualitatively and seek to share those findings on a regular basis with the Executive Leadership Team and broader agency audience. We believe it is this transparency of action that will help us make the change we need to see possible, which you can find in our detailed report.
See the report here.
