Gender Pay Gap Report 2023

The drivers of our gender pay gap

Women in senior roles The quartile analysis shows us that another key driver of the pay gap is the difference in numbers of senior women and men. People in senior roles earn more as a reflection of their skills, experience and responsibilities, and this influences both the pay gap and bonus gap, as higher bonuses tend to be paid to more senior colleagues.

• Most part-time workers fall within the lower and upper middle quartiles.

ability to source talent in key roles and was aligned with roles the government has designated as experiencing a skills shortage in the UK. While we have made improvements in representation in these areas, the lower number of women in senior and technical/specialist roles continues to drive our gender pay gap. However, to support our digital customer service strategy, we grew our IT and Data team by 39% between 2022 and 2023, and with

• The percentage of women in the upper quartile bracket has increased slightly, from 38% in 2022 to 42% in 2023, demonstrating a positive shift towards more women in higher paid roles. Of the 147 new starters between April 2022 and April 2023, 64% were women (an increase of 5% from the previous year). While we are starting to see a re-balancing of salaries across genders, in 2023 the number of men who joined us in senior roles still exceeded women, and the number of women who joined us in more junior roles exceeded men, both factors that influence the pay gap. Women in technical roles The drivers for our pay gap remain the same as in previous years; that is, a higher level of recruitment in areas such as IT, Data, and Pricing that are traditionally “male-dominated” and attract higher salaries due to the in-demand skillset. In our 2023 salary review, which came into effect on 1st January 2023, and consistent with our practice from previous years, we paid a higher premium on certain roles in IT, Data, and Pricing that are particularly hard to recruit, further increasing average salaries in these departments. This was a strategic decision to increase our

this growth, the number of women recruited into this department, either externally or from within, increased. In the 2023 reporting period, the ratio of women to men new starters in our IT and Data teams increased from 30% in 2022, to 42% in 2023, demonstrating that our actions to attract and retain more women in technical roles are having a positive effect in shifting the dial at Animal Friends.

Women represent 73% of the lower two quartiles at Animal Friends, and men 55% of the top two – both these factors together have an impact on the pay gap. Our pay quartiles explained… • 93% of lower quartile roles are in our Operations areas. • Women colleagues are well-represented in both the lower and lower middle quartiles. This includes most part-time workers and frontline customer roles in Operations.

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