Gender pay gap report 2023

Diversity is essential to excellence in scientific endeavour. It increases breadth and perspective, leading to more innovation and creativity. 

We want the Crick to be a place where everyone feels valued and where diversity is celebrated and seen as part of the foundation for our institute’s success.

We remain committed to creating equality of opportunity and promoting diversity and inclusion at the Francis Crick Institute. We are an equal pay employer. However, we have a gender pay gap and continue to work towards addressing that gap.
 

Our mean gender pay gap was 9.7% in April 2023 and our median gender pay gap was 1.7%.

These are lower than the national mean gender pay gap of 13.2% and considerably lower than the national median gender pay gap of 14.3% in November 2023 (source: Office for National Statistics).

We continue to review and aim to reduce our gender pay gap. This year, our mean gender pay gap has narrowed from 11.4% in 2022 to 9.7% in April 2023, and our median gender pay gap has reduced from 2.9% to 1.7%.

Gender pay gap fluctuations are to be expected. Our gender pay gap in April 2023 remains lower than it was when it was first reported in April 2017. Evidently, we are driving lasting change to our gender pay gap and our approach to gender equity.

As in previous years, the main reason that we have a gender pay gap at the Crick is that we have more men than women in senior roles across our institute.

One of the reasons that our gender pay gap has narrowed again this year, is that the number of women in higher-paid roles in the upper quartile has increased (from 42% in 2022 to 44% in 2023) and the number of women in roles in the upper middle quartile has also increased (from 53% in 2022 to 57% in 2023).

Overall, there are more women than men working at the Crick, but this has remained constant at 52% since 2020. 

The Crick does not operate a bonus scheme.

For gender pay gap reporting purposes, we are required to report any rewards related to profit sharing, productivity or performance.

As in previous years, we made a small number of payments under our Rewards to Inventors programme, under which individuals who create intellectual property that the Crick is able to commercialise may be entitled to a share of the net revenue this generates.

In January 2023, we also made flat-rate cost-of-living payments to eligible Crick employees to support our people with significant increases in the cost of living. These payments are included in our bonus pay gap calculations for 2023.

We also made a small number of other payments to support employees in key roles joining the Crick at the start of their employment and these are included in our bonus pay gap calculations. 

Our bonus pay gap is:

• Mean bonus pay gap: 9.5%
• Median bonus pay gap: 0%

The proportion of men and women receiving a bonus is:

• Men: 88.1%
• Women: 89.8%

Our focus on gender balance and equity have contributed an overall reduction in our gender pay gap since reporting began in 2017, and we anticipate a trend towards continued narrowing of our gender pay gap in the years ahead.

We are committed to creating and maintaining a culture that promotes inclusivity and supports working parents, and to recruiting and developing women leaders in science.

In support of our ambition to promote women in science and improve our gender pay gap we continue to monitor and review our activity: reviewing our pay and recognition to ensure gender equity and monitoring recruitment statistics to ensure we are accessible to women at all stages in their careers.

Actions we have taken to drive a reduction in our gender pay gap include:

• The introduction of a core-funded research programme for all new group leaders which appears to remove the need for unhealthy competition. Our colleagues, in particular, like the model as it provides a stable period when research can be done without the stress of writing grants and provides stability and flexibility to start a family without the concerns of securing grants while having a career break. 
• A generous support package for group leaders moving to the Crick to enable them to settle and support their families during the first few years.
• Automatic contract extensions and flexibility on review dates for colleagues taking maternity, paternity or adoption leave.
• We provide training and development opportunities to educate and enable colleagues with mentoring programmes encouraged for all staff, and essential training in equality, diversity and inclusion.
• We offer family-friendly policies and benefits to all staff and have structured our benefits to provide support for family and carers. All Crick employees can access a parental leave return payment, childcare allowances for young children and up to five days emergency carer and childcare cover per year, and wellbeing support for all family members including a 24-hour GP service and assistance programme.
   

We must continue to be proactive in our approach to increasing all forms of diversity, including gender diversity at the Crick, if we are to pursue our strategy of discovery without boundaries.

I confirm that our gender pay gap calculations are accurate and meet the requirements of the regulations.

Jacqueline Davies

Chief People Officer