O’Brien Media Limited Gender Pay Gap Reports

Notes on Gender Pay Gap Reports

How we calculate the pay gap

This is a summary of the requirements to assist with understanding the information we have published.

We are required to publish the overall gender pay gap based on all “normal” pay which for Merton will include basic pay, permanent allowances, London Weighting (where applicable) and payments for maintenance/provision of a vehicle (the Essential Car User Lump Sum allowance). Variable payments such as overtime are excluded.

The snapshot date each year is 31 March and the overall pay gap calculations are based on pay received in the pay period in which it falls (in O’Brien Media’s case the March 2017 payroll). We are required to publish the information for 31 March 2017 by 31 March 2018. For future years, we will endeavour to publish data by the end of April each year (for example, the data for 31 March 2018 will be published by the end of April 2018).

We publish statistics as follows:

Hourly Rate

Firstly, the payments in March are equated to an hourly rate, and the difference (as a percentage) between male and female mean and median hourly rates for the organisation must be published.

Pay Quartiles

Secondly, all the pay records are ranked from highest hourly rate to lowest hourly rate. We are then required to split this list into 4 equal parts, and then to work out how many males and how many females are in each of these 4 quartiles and show these as a percentage. The naming of the quartiles is that which the government use on the website where the information is published.

Bonus

A separate calculation is then made for “bonus”, which has a broad definition and includes items such as retention payments, merit payments and long service awards. This calculation considers all payments made in the 12 months up to the snapshot date (31 March).

Average and Median bonus payments made to males and females are calculated. We are then required to show the difference (as a percentage) between male and female mean, and median bonus pay for the year.

A second calculation is then made to show the proportion of males and female employees (as a percentage) who received such a bonus payment.