Funeral Partners Gender Pay Gap Reports (2022 – 2023)

Equality Act (Gender Pay Gap Reporting) Regulations 2017.

Organisation name: Funeral Partners Ltd
Date of report: 4th April 2024
Relevant period: From 06.04.22 to 05.04.23
Snapshot date: 05.04.23

The Funeral Partners Group (“the Group”) is the UK’s third largest funeral services business and manages over 250 funeral homes across the country. The majority of the Group’s funeral homes have typically kept their original company names following acquisition and becoming part of the Group. The Group has been reporting formally on gender pay levels since 2018 and is pleased to provide its latest Gender Pay Gap annual report.

This latest report on gender pay from the Group is based on a workforce (designated by the Equality Act as being full-pay relevant employees for Gender Pay Gap Reporting) of 889 at the report snapshot date of 05.04.23, of which:

• 455 are male; and
• 434 female.

There is an increase of around 5% in the size of the workforce compared to the previous Gender Pay Gap report workforce for the business, a reflection of natural growth within the business and acquisitions completed in the 12-month period since the previous snapshot date. Within the growth in the workforce year on year, this includes a greater increase in the number of female employees (17%).

This report highlights the Group’s key perspectives and observations in terms of it’s gender pay positions, and does so with reference to the prior year comparative positions.

Organisation/Company statement

The Group’s pay structures are intended to ensure that there are minimal gender pay gaps within the Company. We endeavour to reward people fairly and consistently within our processes and reward structure. There are some inherent challenges for the Group in terms of ensuring minimal gender pay gaps are in existence. Most notably this is in terms of the Group inheriting positions with acquired businesses which may not align with the Group’s overall pay structure. The acquisitions can initially create outcomes from a gender pay perspective which are not in line with the Group’s objectives. Such inherited positions are sought to be addressed over a period of time, albeit not in a way to impact adversely upon the wider integration processes of acquired businesses into the Group.

The Group is satisfied with its latest set of gender pay results, which demonstrate the gap in pay and reward metrics between genders generally narrowing to some degree. This is in the context of the focus the Group has applied to its’ reward framework, and the objective to pay employees fairly, as evident by the median hourly pay rate increasing by 10% year on year.

The Group expects to further improve its gender pay positions in the coming years.

Differences in hourly pay

Differences in hourly pay are measured by comparing both the mean hourly pay rates by gender as well as the median hourly pay rates. As at the latest snapshot date, the gap in the median hourly pay rate between males and females in the business has narrowed, while the gap when assessing the mean hourly pay rate remains unchanged year on year. The pay gap positions for each measure are as follows:

Difference between the median hourly rate of pay between male and female employees as at 05.04.23: 4.2% (05.04.22: 6.3%), with the latest reported median hourly rate of pay for males being £13.55, versus £12.98 for females

Difference between the mean hourly rate of pay between male and female employees as at 05.04.23: 13.8 % (05.04.22: 13.8%), with the latest reported mean hourly rate of pay for males being £16.38, versus £14.12 for females

*Note – the 05.04.22 snapshot figures have been restated to include relevant pay elements paid to casual colleagues which were previously not included within pay rate calculations.

The position whereby the hourly pay rates for male employees in the Group are higher than the rates for female employees is linked to the gender splits by pay quartile:

Pay quartiles – the split of genders by pay quartile shows that the majority of males employed by the Group are in the Upper and Upper Middle pay quartiles, whereas the majority of females are in the Lower and Lower Middle pay quartiles. The skew towards more males being in the upper pay quartiles is evident when looking at the split of gender in each pay quartile, with, for example, 60.8% of those in the Upper pay quartile being male and 39.2% being female (the positions for the last 3 snapshot dates are shown in the tables below).
With more males in the upper pay quartiles this contributes to the hourly pay rates for males being higher than for females in the Group. The Group is seeking to see a more even
distribution by gender in the quartiles, and as such over the last 3 years the split of the Upper pay quartile has started to become more balanced between the genders.

The gender gap is also affected by a lower quartile role within the business more typically filled by males which has a scope for optional overtime which will increase the hourly total pay at the snapshot date for male relative to females.

Pay review and reward strategy and reducing the Group’s gender pay gap– via pay reviews, the Group is in the process of looking to narrow the gap in pay rates between job roles and as such narrow the gap between lower and higher paid roles. Pay review plans for 2024 will see the level of pay increase for lower paid roles being greater than for higher paid roles, to give a more balanced pay framework. With the Group currently seeing more females in lower paid roles, the Group also expects this strategy to help further reduce the gender pay gap in terms of hourly pay rates.

Differences in bonus pay

The difference in bonus pay levels is also measured. The Group has a mixed position in terms of its Bonus pay gap by gender, whereby median bonus pay levels are higher for females, whereas mean bonus pay levels are higher for males. The latest positions by each metric are as follows:

Difference between the median bonus pay paid to male employees and that paid to female employees in the 12-month period ending on 05.04.23: -13.1%; (05.04.22: -54.3%)
Difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male employees and that paid to female employees in the 12-month period ending on 05.04.23: 37.6% (05.04.22: 21.1%)

The payment of bonuses by the Group is largely discretionary. In the latest 12 month reporting period the Group sought to support colleagues in the context of the ‘Cost of Living’ crisis, by awarding a bonus across a large number of employees which was consistent in value irrespective of gender and job role. Thus, while the average level of bonus paid in the year was lower, bonuses were more evenly spread across teams and genders. This is illustrated by the data in the table showing a more comparable proportion of females receiving a bonus in the latest period than in the previous two years:

Note – the mean Male bonus levels are significantly distorted by a separate bonus scheme, linked to the specific nature of the roles of 4 people, and as such distinct to the bonus scheme for the majority of the business. All of the people in the separate scheme are male, and their bonus payments are of a relatively high value. The impact of this is evident by the extent of the differential between the mean gap and median gap with regards to bonus payments.

Declaration

I confirm that the information contained within this report is accurate.

Signed:

Date: 4th April 20234Name: Andrew Fraser
Position: Chief Financial Officer