The gender pay gap is a measure designed to show the difference between the gross hourly earnings for all men in an organisation and the gross hourly earnings for all women.
The Sodexo figures have been released five months ahead of the launch of new government legislation for transparency into gender pay equality. Under new laws, employers in the UK with 250 or more employees will have to calculate their gender pay gap from April 2017 and publish the details by April 2018.
Sean Haley, regional chairman of Sodexo UK & Ireland, said: “We believe that to address gender equality it is critical for businesses to be transparent about any pay gap that exists. We are proud that Sodexo is one of the first companies of its size to announce its gender pay gap.
“Whilst our gender pay gap is significantly smaller than the national figure, we are confident in our ability, through pro-active initiatives, to reduce it even further.”
Publishing these initial findings is the first step in Sodexo’s plan to address pay gaps for different employee groups and follows a major audit into the salaries of Sodexo’s entire UK workforce of 38,500 people (which includes casual employees). The audit and resultant project will not only look into gender, but other characteristics such as ethnicity, age and disability.