The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) monitors and publishes its gender pay gap on an annual basis.
On 5 April 2023 the RCP employed a total of 386 staff, comprising 278 (72%) women and 108 (28%) men. This includes people working for the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK as they are employed by the RCP.
Following the national rules, on the pay period our data cover, 12 women and one man were excluded from the pay gap and pay quartile sections of the report because they received less than their normal pay (due to maternity, paternity and sick leave). Our gender pay gap was therefore calculated based on 373 full-pay relevant employees (266 women and 107 men).
In 2023, the median gender pay gap for the RCP was 17.8%. The mean gender pay gap was 17.7%. Compared with 2022, this represents a decrease of 1.2% for the median, and an increase of 0.7 % for the mean.
Our analysis shows that an overall reduction in the proportion of men in our lower pay bands has contributed to this increase, as was the case in 2022.
Further analysis
The figure below shows the proportion of women and men in each pay quartile. The quartile pay bands are calculated by dividing the workforce into four equal bands ranging from the highest to the lowest hourly rate.
The deviation from the distribution of staff that we would expect to see in each quartile, based on the gender split of the RCP’s workforce, is shown in red. These data show that women made up over 80% of employees in our lower quartile (an increase of 9.0% on 2022), and over 77% of employees in the lower-middle quartile (a decrease of 4.6% on 2022).
There was an almost equal split between women and men in senior roles making up our upper quartile. Our executive leadership team comprising the most senior staff roles at the RCP, is made up of five men and four women.
The differential distribution of women and men in the wider workforce continues to have an impact on the gender pay gap at the RCP, with a higher proportion of men employed in senior posts, and more women in administrative and coordination roles.
Actions and next steps
Although we have seen a small improvement in our median figure, we are disappointed not to have made any significant progress in reducing our gender pay gap in 2023.
We will continue to build on the actions we committed to undertaking in previous years and align our actions to the government report on effective evidence-based actions for employers. These include:
- improving our recruitment practices by ensuring we have diverse interview panels and monitoring this as a key performance indicator (KPI) as part of a dashboard
- monitoring job progression and promotion by gender on an annual basis and ensuring this is proportionate to our workforce balance
- supporting family leave and developing tools and information for colleagues
- improving workplace flexibility for both men and women, including the launch of our hybrid working policy
- continuing to support female staff members with a series of ‘Women into leadership’ conferences. We recognise that women often experience disadvantage and want to invest in our women employees so that they have the confidence and skills to progress into leadership roles.
- career skills coaching for employees going on maternity leave, to boost confidence and support them to showcase their experience and skills. This was introduced in response to feedback gathered during maternity focus groups at which participants identified a loss of confidence in professional skills and contribution while they were on maternity leave
- offering network programmes – we recently appointed a chair and vice chair to lead our Women’s Network. The priorities of this new initiative to support female employees have been determined by women at the RCP and include supporting people at different stages of their career and addressing assumptions and behaviour that may undermine women’s progress
- progressing our work around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the RCP; this year we published an annual progress report on our work to achieve the recommendations set by Ben Summerskill, which we will continue to action
- continually reviewing our diversity training and ensuring that this includes both existing staff and the stakeholders we work with.
We confirm that our data has been calculated according to the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.
Dr Ian Bullock
Chief executive officer
Chiraag Panchal
Executive director, People and Culture