Gamma has long been committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce as well as nurturing our reputation of being a great employer to work for. We believe in creating opportunities for all to grow and to flourish at work.

Gamma operates in a sector in which it is well documented that there is a shortage of technically skilled females who choose to pursue a career in telecommunications and technology. We have been keen to address this by ensuring that we recruit in an equal and fair way while maintaining standards of best practice. Working with a number of universities and other partners, we have been successful in attracting qualified people into teams where knowledge of science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) is essential.

Where we have recruited recently qualified staff into our Billing, Software Development, Programme Development and Technical Support Departments, we have a gender pay gap in single digits. This gives us comfort that our general recruitment policies are working. However, because of the historic difficulty in recruiting females into technical roles, including leadership and management, we do have imbalances in other areas of the business.

We are, however, working hard to encourage, support, develop and retain women throughout their careers at Gamma and to prepare them for senior roles within the organisation.

Additional Disclosure

We believe that the mean pay gap of 34.6% across the business does not tell the whole story. In common with other organisations, Gamma has a bias of men in senior roles within the business which is driving the pay gap. This phenomenon is heightened within our technical teams where, in previous generations, men were more likely to undertake STEM subjects in Further Education. We set out later in this document what we are doing to encourage more young women to undertake a career in a technical field.

In areas which are less reliant on a strong technical background, the bias caused by a tendency of having men in senior roles is reduced and therefore the gender pay gap is smaller and in some cases reversed. Where men and women are doing the same role in the same department the salary banding will be the same. The pay gap is created by the numbers of each gender in particular roles in each department.

The mean pay gap for a number of these departments is shown below:

In other areas which are more reliant on a technical background we are pleased to be able to report that measures we have been taking over a number of years are resulting in a gender pay gap which is lower than our average and in line with the national average of 9.1%.

Changing the balance within sales

Historically, sales teams within the telecoms industry have been male dominated. At Gamma, even two years ago, in sales, we had a significant gender imbalance of 9:1 males to females across the overall sales team. It was a real struggle to attract women into technical sales roles. In seeking to change this imbalance, during the latter half of 2016, we planned and expanded the sales team by creating new roles of Internal Account Managers to help us better serve the smaller accounts and build a pipeline of sales people for the future. Given the success of filling roles internally at Gamma it was also imperative we apply a culture of inclusion, mentoring and openness. This appears to have been a great success in helping to nurture the right behaviours and ethos.

We focused on graduate placements. We observed a significant increase in female applicants between 2015 and 2017 and by continuing to concentrate on employing the right people for the job (cultural fit, attitude, skills and abilities) we have seen a significant increase in female numbers within the team. The ratio of males to females across the overall sales team has reduced to 3:1 in the space of two years. Looking ahead, as we have created a clear route for career development in sales, we expect to see more women gain senior sales roles over time.

Systemic imbalance

Gamma supports the Government’s objective to close the gender pay gap within a generation to create a fairer society and unleash the huge potential of talent in the UK so every person has equal opportunity for future employment prospects. Tackling this needs to start at the beginning of education by encouraging all children in early years to become so excited about STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects that they decide to study them throughout their formal education then going on to choose STEM-related apprenticeships or university education. Research shows that females are even less likely than males to pursue STEM subjects as they progress through education or to choose to a career where knowledge and skills in these topics can be applied. This adversely impacts on the already shrinking pool of talent from which businesses can draw up thereby creating a greater skills shortage in the UK.

Looking at the imbalance of gender across all sectors of the UK economy, males are more likely than females to be in senior roles in organisations, while females are more likely than males to be in front-line roles at the lower end of the organisation. Technical and IT-related roles in the UK economy are more likely to have a significantly higher proportion of males than females which attract higher rates of pay than other roles at similar levels of seniority. Even in 2018, females are still more likely than males to have had breaks from work that have affected their career progression, for example, to bring up children, although there are signs that this is changing in a minority of cases.

What we will do next

There is still much more to be done and over the next three years, we will: –

• Participate in Stem Ambassadors programme
• Expand coaching opportunities
• Develop a woman in leadership programme
• Support women returners
• Develop mentoring programme for all women including women returners
• Creation of role models
• Seek to increase female representation at senior level

I confirm that this statement is accurate.

Andrew Belshaw
Chief Financial Officer
4 April 2018