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Unilever in the UK publishes 2021 Gender Pay Report

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Today we published our gender pay results for the fifth year, in line with the government’s Gender Pay regulations introduced in April 2017*.

UK gender pay report
  • Median pay for Unilever in the UK is 3.8% in favour of women
  • Median pay for Unilever UK Limited (UK specific operations, including factories) is 3.9% in favour of women
  • Median pay for Unilever UK Central Resources Limited (global functions based in the UK) is 9.2% in favour of men

Today we published our gender pay results for the fifth year, in line with the government’s Gender Pay regulations introduced in April 2017*.

As required by government regulation for gender pay reporting, more detailed figures from our two main employing entities in the UK have been published. These are Unilever UK Limited, representing our UK specific operations, including factories, and Unilever UK Central Resources Limited, representing our global functions based in the UK.

We’ve also chosen to share overall ‘Unilever in the UK’ data looking at the combination of these reporting entities and our integrated companies in the UK, as this provides a more transparent and representative picture of our UK business and employment landscape.

You can find our full data and an update on our gender strategy, and the action and policies driving this, in our latest report. Please click here to view Unilever UK's 2021 Gender Pay Report (PDF 5.26 MB)

Image with text block - sebastian munden
Sebastian Munden, General Manager, Unilever UK & Ireland: “Everyone at Unilever is committed to making our company more equitable, diverse and inclusive in every way. Overall, the data tells us that we are moving in the right direction, and it’s good to see continued improvement in the number of women in middle-management and more senior roles, but we know we still need to do more to see this progress and momentum in our most senior positions and teams. Ensuring women at Unilever have the right opportunities to thrive and progress at every stage of their careers is critical to our success.”
Image with text block - Emily Pittman
Emily Pittman, Executive sponsor of our Unilever UK & Ireland Gender Network and General Manager, Unilever Ireland: “Over the past year Unity, our UK & Ireland gender balance network, has continued to grow and bring together some of our most passionate people to promote equity for all genders across our business. We’ve also worked hard to ensure our policies are as inclusive and accessible as possible and looked at what more we can do to develop and grow our female talent and leaders. Our focus now is to continue to challenge ourselves on what we can do better and to keep driving forward this important agenda so that women are fully supported and represented at all levels of the business.”
Image of Kate Withers
Kate Withers, UKI HR Policy Specialist: “In April 2021, we joined our maternity and adoption policies to better acknowledge all routes to parenthood. This has reframed the qualifying criteria and made our policies much more inclusive and accessible. “Another policy we really proud to have introduced is our fertility policy. With one in six couples struggling with fertility complications, we want to break the stigma and give our colleagues a safe space to talk and seek support. We hope by sharing the resources we have available; it legitimises people in feeling able to share that they’re going through a fertility process and means we can more effectively support them and signpost them to available support and resources.”

We know that harmful social norms and stereotypes can contribute to persistent gender pay gaps. Challenging and changing those norms is a vital part of our Unilever Compass strategy, which includes gender as a critical component in our goals on culture and leadership. Some of our longest-running programmes have focused on leadership and gender balance, enabling us to achieve gender balance at management level in the UK in 2017. However, there is more to do to, particularly at senior management level where women are still under-represented.

Through our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy, of which gender is one element, we’re removing barriers and bias and working to achieve equity in our policies and practices, our employee experience and culture and in our approach to retention, development and promotion. We’re establishing leadership accountability to drive change, supporting employees to excel in their roles and aiming to achieve a workforce that is fundamentally representative of the communities we operate in.

You can read more about how Unilever is driving gender equality and women's empowerment at a global level here.

*

Under UK government regulation introduced in April 2017, companies with over 250 employees are required to make and publish six calculations, including gender pay gap as a mean and median, the mean and median bonus gap, and the proportion of males and females divided into four groups from lowest to highest pay.

Businesses are obliged to report this data separately for each legal entity that has at least 250 employees. In addition to publishing overall data for our UK business, Unilever has therefore also published separate data for its two major UK employing entities - Unilever UK Ltd and Unilever UK Central Resources Ltd.

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