Our purpose is to champion better work and working lives. This means we are committed to fostering inclusion, fairness and flexibility within the CIPD, and we take seriously our responsibility to lead by example.

One of the ways we do this is by reporting our gender and ethnicity pay gap data. And when doing so, we choose to go behind the headline figures to help us understand how our culture and actions can help us close the gap.

Reporting annually is an important way to track how recruitment, reward, and progression decisions impact the achievement of a diverse, inclusive workforce.

The gender pay gap is calculated by taking all employees across an organisation and comparing the average pay between men and women. Even though we have clear, externally benchmarked salary ranges in place for all jobs - to ensure that everyone is paid fairly for undertaking the same or a similar role - it’s still possible to have a gender pay gap.

This year our median gender pay gap narrowed by 1.7 percentage points to 12.0%. Our mean gender pay gap remained steady, widening only 0.4 percentage points to 12.8%.

We see fluctuations in our median pay gap, month by month and year by year, because we are a medium-sized organisation with a predominantly female workforce. Small changes in our employee profile have a significant impact.Closing the gender pay gap is not a quick and easy fix. It requires a meaningful, consistent and sustained shift in cultural norms. We maintain our focus on opportunity, inclusion and fairness and our report shows the important actions we are taking – in the areas of recruitment and retention, pay transparency, flexible working and parental leave – to drive much needed change.