Gender Pay Gap Report 2024
Company Overview
- Origins: Fields the Jewellers started in the early 1980s with its first store in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. Initially a family-run wholesale business, it supplied jewellery and giftware to independent jewellers across Ireland.
- Expansion: During the 1990s and 2000s, the company expanded significantly, opening additional stores throughout Ireland. Today, Fields operates 13 stores, making it Ireland’s largest jewellery retailer.
- Family Ethos: Despite its growth, Fields maintains its family-owned roots, with the founding family still involved as shareholders. The company prides itself on preserving a strong family ethos.
- Employee Development: Fields values its employees, many of whom have spent their entire careers with the company. The company offers a comprehensive Learning & Development programme, ensuring employees are knowledgeable in various areas such as client experience, systems, product knowledge, and leadership skills. The company adopts a blended approach to learning by offering face-to-face and online workshops and providing employees with access to an online Learning Portal.
What is Gender Pay Gap?
The Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021, effective from 31st May 2022, amends the Employment Equality Act 1998. It mandates certain employers to report and publish data on employee pay, categorised by gender, to highlight any existing gender pay gaps. This information will be published annually.
Gender Pay Gap and Equal Pay
Pay Equity focuses on ensuring that any differences in pay between men and women performing the same job are not due to gender. In other words, individuals in identical roles should receive equal pay regardless of gender.
On the other hand, the Gender Pay Gap is a measure of pay differences across an entire organisation, based on average earnings. It doesn't account for the specific roles employees hold or the gender distribution within the organisation.
Therefore, an organisation that practices fair and equitable pay within individual roles can still have a Gender Pay Gap. The existence of a Gender Pay Gap does not necessarily indicate an issue with Pay Equity.
Method of Calculation
- Mean Pay Gap: The mean pay gap is calculated by determining the average hourly pay for each gender. This involves adding up the hourly wages of all female employees and dividing by the total number of women. The same process is applied to male employees. The mean pay gap is the difference between these two average hourly rates.
- Median Pay Gap: The median pay gap is determined by finding the middle value in the pay data. To do this, all hourly pay rates for women and men are arranged in ascending order. The median is the middle number in each list. The difference between these two median values represents the median pay gap.
- Pay Quartiles: Pay quartiles provide insight into how male and female employees are distributed within the pay structure. To calculate pay quartiles, employee pay rates are listed from highest to lowest. This range is then divided into four equally sized groups, or quartiles. Each quartile shows the proportion of male and female employees at different pay levels, illustrating the gender distribution across the organisation.
Our Gender Pay Gap Results
We are reporting on a total of 156 employees across our stores, head office, and warehouses in Ireland. The snapshot date for this report is the 30th June 2024, with a reference period from the 1st July 2023 to the 30th June 2024. Out of the 156 employees, 27 were men and 129 were women. Additionally, 69 employees were employed on a part-time basis, and 14 employees were employed on temporary contracts.
| Measure | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Gender Pay Gap | 43.3% | 34.3% |
| Bonus Pay Gap | 37.0% | 10.7% |
Out of all our female employees:
- 71.3% received a bonus.
- 7% received benefits in kind.
Out of all our male employees:
- 40.7% received a bonus.
- 33.3% received benefits in kind.
Pay Quartiles
- Upper Quartile: 62% Women, 38% Men
- Upper Middle Quartile: 92% Women, 8% Men
- Lower Middle Quartile: 92% Women, 8% Men
- Lower Quartile: 85% Women, 15% Men
Part-Time Employees - 69
Mean gender pay gap: 49.2%
Median gender pay gap: -0.7%
Temporary Employees - 14
Mean gender pay gap: -2.5%
Median gender pay gap: -2.4%
Understanding the Gender Pay Gap
A positive gender pay gap indicates that, on average, women are in a less favourable position than men across the company. However, this does not necessarily mean that the company lacks equal pay for equal work. Pay quartiles help illustrate the distribution of male and female employees within the pay hierarchy. In the highest pay quartile, there are approximately two women for every man. However, in the lowest pay quartile, 85% of the employees are women, and this imbalance largely contributes to the gender pay gap in both mean and median hourly pay.
During the review year, 71.3% of women and 40.7% of men received a bonus. The mean bonus pay gap is 37%, while the median is 10.7%. One factor contributing to this gap is that a larger proportion of female employees in our sales teams choose to work part-time. This reduces their selling time and, therefore, the bonus they earn tends to be lower.
As a high service-level retail business, 53% of our workforce consists of frontline store sales consultants and supervisors. We are pleased to report that the pay gap between women and men in this sector is less than 0.5%.
Conclusion
We are dedicated to fostering diversity and achieving balance across all functions and roles within our business, with a strong emphasis on gender inclusion. We understand the importance of actively promoting career progression and representation in senior roles. By building a strong People culture, we are confident that our recent progress will continue to advance in the coming months and years, helping to close the structural gender pay gap as much as possible.