Case Study: Equal Pay - The Co -operative Group

The Co-operative Group conducted their first formal Equal Pay Review at the end of 2004, concentrating on the management grades for around 2,400 employees, 65% of whom were men. This review highlighted areas for improvement, notably around pay decisions for new recruits and existing employees, together with a need to reinforce good practice by line managers in reward decisions.

The Group had also been working to improve the existing grading structure for management jobs to develop effective links with market rate data through the introduction of Job Family Modelling. This identifies jobs in which the type of work is similar but at different levels, and slots them into ‘job families’. Within each job family there are a number of levels of work and these are reflected in the respective grade and the position within that grade assigned to each job. Salary levels for the jobs within the various levels of the families can then be compared with market rate data for jobs of the same type and level, bringing together like work and work of equal value The Equal Pay Review data was fed into the Job Families Modelling review, building further robustness around grading.

The approach to pay decisions is under further development with a series of workshops this year and planned implementation before the next annual pay review in 2007.

The Co-operative Group continues to drive equal pay throughout the organisation. Once it is satisfied that all individuals in the management grades are paid fairly, the same process will be extended to clerical grades.

The Group focuses on three main areas:

1. Ensuring that line managers review any gender disparity during the annual pay award process. Guidelines give clear direction to managers to ensure that salary increases and bonuses are paid fairly irrespective of gender
2. Within the Job Family Modelling process, all gender differences have been reviewed for the management grades and action taken to address any differences There are now no statistically significant differences in the top two management grades.
3. Regular reviews are undertaken by the Employee Relations and Diversity teams to assess the overall progress and identify any further areas for attention.