This is our second Gender Pay Gap report at Butternut Box, covering a 12-month period including the snapshot date of 5th April 2023. The gender pay gap is the difference in men's and women’s average pay. It doesn’t compare the pay received by men and women for doing the same or equivalent work (that’s called equal pay).
Our Squad is made up of over 650 people working across the UK and Europe, including over 400 based out of Rudie’s Kitchen in Doncaster. This report covers the gender pay gap data for our Squad members based in the UK and our eligible UK Brand Ambassadors.
The Squad (UK only) here at Butternut is made up of:
44.5% women
55.5% men
Following government guidance, Squad members that do not identify with either gender have not been included in this report.
👉 Quick maths lesson recap: The mean represents the total of everyone’s hourly pay divided by the total number of Squad members, which gives us an average hourly pay for both men and women.
The results of the Gender Pay Gap can be either positive or negative figures.
A positive percentage shows that women have lower pay or bonuses than men.
A negative percentage shows that men have lower pay or bonuses than women.
It goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway, just in case) that we firmly believe in fair compensation for our Squad members. While we don’t pay performance bonuses, we make sure to be open and honest in our gender pay gap reporting by accounting for various additional payments throughout the year. That’s things like sales commission, recruitment referral bonuses, and end of year bonuses for our Squad members at Rudie’s Kitchen. We also take into account the taxable value of share options.
This year, we’re continuing to focus on the mean pay gap in our report. That’s because more than half of our Squad is based at Rudie's Kitchen, and 68% of them are male. So the mean pay gap is the best reflection of the Squad as it looks at average pay for both men and women.
Since our last report, our mean pay gap has widened from 1.2% to 3.7%, which remains lower than the April 2023 ONS figure of 7.7%.
It’s worth noting that our mean pay gap is likely to fluctuate. This is down to the taxable value of share options, and the fact that opportunities for Squad members to liquidate their holdings can happen on an ad-hoc basis - as was the case in 2023. Read on a little further to hear about the clear steps we’re taking to strengthen equality and reduce this pay gap in future.
Whilst the mean pay gap is our key metric, there are plenty of others we look at. Here are some more stats, facts and graphs:
Our median pay gap is -8.1%, down from -1.5% in 2022.
Our mean bonus pay gap is -28.12%, down from -9% in 2022.
Our median bonus pay gap reduced to 0% for 2023, down from 3.7% in 2022.
On average, women received a bonus 28.12% higher than men.
Driven by the Rudie’s Kitchen end of year bonus paid in December 2022, 65.9% of women received a bonus compared to 85.4% of men.
We have increased the number of women in our upper hourly pay quarter by 5.7% and the upper middle hourly pay quarter by 2.3%. You can see the distribution in the graph below.
Quartiles represent the pay rates from the lowest to the highest for our Squad members, split into four equal-sized groups. This graph shows the percentage of men and women in each quartile.
👉 We’ve continued our focus on the top end of our recruitment funnel. We’re using advertising platforms to find diverse candidates during the hiring process, and apply gender decoders to our job descriptions to reduce any gendered language in our advertisements and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.
👉 Since April 2023, 96 of our UK based Squad members received a promotion, 48.95% of whichi were women. We’ve provided opportunities for professional growth, enabling Squad members to progress into leadership roles. We also hired 17 new people into our leadership team, ten of which were women, with seven promoted internally and three hired externally.
👉 In 2023 we relaunched our Career Steps Framework to provide clarity on the pathways and progression available at Butternut. We will be building on this throughout 2024, with a People focus on developing and investing in our Squad members, to help enhance their skills and advance their careers.
👉 We’re rolling out a training programme for all of our Operations and Kitchen-based teams in 2024 which is designed to drive awareness on how to build a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment.
👉 We sponsored a Rails Girls event in 2023. The event offers the chance for students and aspiring techies to participate and be paired up with an experienced developer, who teaches them the basics of programming. Some of our own engineers joined the event as coaches.
We'll keep working on making our People processes and employee benefits even better. Our goal is to make sure everyone at Butternut Box feels valued and equal, no matter their background or circumstances.
