Gender pay gap 2024
This is the eighth year that Sharps Bedrooms have published our gender pay gap report and our results show a pleasing and notable decrease in our pay gap this year. The gender pay gap is the difference in the hourly rate of pay between our male and female employees across the whole organisation.
Sharps are fully committed to improving the gender diversity of our business and whilst we acknowledge that our pay gap will fluctuate over time as we increase the number of women working at all levels of the organisation, we can really see year on year improvement in our Gender Pay Gap.
2024 Gender Pay Gap Report
Sharps is an unusual mix of retail, sales, manufacturing and construction (the installation of our fitted furniture).
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men compared to the average pay of women within an organisation, across all levels of the business. What this means in practice is that if women do more of the less well-paid jobs than men, the gender pay gap is likely to be bigger.
It is important to reiterate that we don’t pay people differently based on their gender. The gender gap is caused by us having a lower proportion (but increasing number) of females in senior leadership roles and a higher proportion in our lower paid roles.
This year’s gender numbers show that progress year on year has continued. The mean gender pay gap is at 3.85% which is a further significant and very pleasing improvement on the 7.8% in 2023. In 2024, the national UK average gender pay gap was 7.0% for full time workers but 13.0% for all workers. Sharps median pay gap is also further improved from 6.7% in 2023 to 3.91% in 2024. We are very excited by this.
34.5% of men were awarded a bonus and 22.5% of women.
Whilst Sharps continues to have a gender pay gap, it is getting considerably closer and we believe it is due to slightly lower representation of women in leadership and fewer men in junior roles but, pleasingly, the pay gap has continued to reduce significantly year on year. To further improve this, a more
balanced distribution is needed overall to narrow and eliminate the gap. We still have a higher proportion of men in very senior roles but there are an equal number of male and female managers at middle manager level and we believe that this will level out with time.
Additionally, variable pay opportunity (bonus) is higher at senior levels. In addition, we have a number of part-time employees, the large majority of whom are women. Although part-time working exacerbates the bonus gap figures, we encourage and support flexible working as part of our strategy to improve retention and progression.
Difference between men and women
Mean | Median | |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly fixed pay | 3.85% | 3.91% |
| Bonus paid | 1.2% | -10.3% |
Proportion awarded a bonus in year
Men | Women | |
|---|---|---|
| Proportion awarded a bonus in year | 34.5% | 22.5% |
| Pay quartiles | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Lower | 72.5% | 27.5% |
| Lower Middle | 57.4% | 42.6% |
| Upper Middle | 66% | 34% |
| Upper | 74% | 26% |
Men | Women | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender distribution
| 67.4% | 32.6% |
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