Gender pay gap reporting

What is gender pay gap reporting?

This is the eighth year we have reported on our gender pay gap. Gender pay gap reporting is not the same as paying men and women equally for doing like-for-like work, but instead looks at the distribution of men and women through all pay levels of the organisation, the hours they work, and the effect this has on average hourly rates of pay. This report is a snapshot of our pay and gender as of 5 April 2024. This lag in reporting time (we don’t report on 2025 until April 2026) is consistent with government requirements.

Why is this important?

It’s important that we have a diverse workforce that brings a wide range of skills, experience and knowledge to our work. We want to encourage a balance of men and women in the workplace and consider new attitudes to work that many people have – for example: part-time vs full-time working, career plans, secondments or career breaks. When we recruit new employees, we always look for the best candidate for the job – irrespective of gender – but we are careful that our process for defining job structure and hours of work does not favour either men or women.

What are we asked to look at?

For gender pay gap reporting we’re asked to look at:

• The difference (as a percentage) between the average pay men and women receive (the ‘mean gender pay gap’)
• The difference (as a percentage) between the median pay men and women receive (the mid-point of the individual pay rates in the organisation – the ‘median gender pay gap’)
• The balance of men and women across our employees overall, and in four equal-sized groups when ranked by pay (‘quartiles’)

It should be noted that individuals who have chosen not to disclose their gender to the organisation are not included within the report.

Employers are asked to do separate calculations in terms of ‘ordinary’ pay (which includes allowances, some of which do not apply to everyone), and ‘bonus’ pay. Because we do not offer bonuses, we only report on ‘ordinary’ pay.

Key findings

Our mean gender pay gap is: 7.3%

The average hourly rate paid to women is 7.3% less than men. Last year, this figure was 9.7%, meaning the mean gender pay gap has decreased by 2.6% in the last year.

Our median gender pay gap is: 4.25%

The median hourly rate paid to women is 4.25% less than men. Last year, the gap was 7.9%, so the median gender pay gap has decreased by 3.65%. 

As noted below, the median gender pay gap for all employees in Scotland in 2024, as reported by the Scottish Government, was 9.2%.

The median is generally used to compare the gender pay gap because the distribution of earnings is uneven, with more people earning lower salaries than higher salaries. The mean is highly influenced by the salaries at the upper end of a pay scale and so may not be truly representative of the average earnings of a typical person. The median avoids this issue and so is considered a better indicator of typical ‘average’ earnings.

The provisional Scottish median gender pay gap for all employees (part-time and full-time) in 2024 is 9.2%, and for the UK as a whole is 13.1%. [1]

[1] Figures taken from Scottish Government annual survey of hours and earnings 2024 
 

Our pay quartiles

Our overall employee mix is 64.6% women, 35.4% men. This is almost exactly the same as reported last year (64.5% women, 35.5% men).

Why do we have a pay gap?

The main reasons we have a gender pay gap are:

• We have more women working than men.
• The women tend to be in roles in the lower quartiles of our pay brackets (71.2% of people earning at our entry rate pay point are women).
• There are proportionally more part-time jobs in our lower pay brackets, which are societally still more likely to be filled by women. The gender balance for full-time roles is 44.2% men, 55.8% women (in April 2023 it was 46.4% male, 53.6% women); for part-time it is 25.4% men, 74.6% women (in April 2023 this was 23.3% men, 76.7% women). This may be early evidence of a shift in these demographics. 

What are we doing to encourage gender balance in the workplace?

• Most of our lower-paid roles are property-based and part-time/part-year. Whilst rates of pay do not vary whether an employee is part-time/part-year, this type of working may have appealed in the past more to women than men.
• Increasing numbers of our properties are open for longer ‘seasons’, with the potential consequence of attracting employees looking for year-round employment. In turn, this may see a more balanced workforce of women and men, with the consequence of addressing the lower quartile challenges.
• Our salary negotiation is carried out on a corporate basis with our trade union, rather than an individual basis. All our salary points are published on our intranet and are visible to all our employees. The relevant salary points are included in job adverts.
• We have a structured interview process for all our vacancies, using a competency-based framework focused on our corporate values.
• There are many training interventions designed to support recruiting line managers, as they’re required to make recruitment decisions based on suitability for the job against the stated job criteria (as opposed to gender or any other protected characteristic). These include recruitment training for managers every six months.
• We have policies and guidance in place that support colleagues in work with different conditions they may experience, such as menopause. We also ensure (as part of our wellbeing communications) that we highlight and raise awareness of different topics which relate to gender, including men’s health awareness campaigns as well as menopause, menstrual health and general wellbeing.
• Our Lead Consultant – Career Pathways and Programmes explores the best way to open and promote career paths for both young people and career changers, and highlights to existing colleagues the potential routes available for their career development within the National Trust for Scotland. We recognise that in the modern world of work many individuals will develop their careers within several workplaces during their working lives. However, the People team want to ensure that Trust is an attractive place for future talent for both career starters and career changers, as well as individuals who want to develop their career in the Trust.
• We continue to operate our family-friendly policies to support individuals who wish to blend family or caring responsibilities with work. Our Flexible Working policy makes sure that decisions about the granting of different ways of working (for example, compressed hours or moving to part-time) are based on business needs and not on factors such as gender (or other protected characteristics). The uptake of Flexible Working will be monitored and specifically analysed against gender and pay to measure impact.
• Every employee is managed effectively and fairly through an annual review of performance and target setting, with regular one-to-one meetings throughout the year. The performance review has an element of self-assessment, but is focused on a joint, collaborative approach from the manager and employee. The performance appraisal process informs pay progression decisions later in the calendar year.

In summary

The Trust takes seriously its responsibility to equality of opportunity in its workforce – and celebrating that workforce’s diversity – and is always developing new ways to encourage people to be part of our workforce, whether as an employee or a volunteer. We want people to recognise us a great place to work, irrespective of gender or any other protected characteristic, but we know that there are some issues we need to address and that these may take some time. The Trust has embarked on a transformational journey to make sure that we can continue to be a leader in conservation and heritage, and doing the right thing for our workforce is very high on our agenda. 

You can read more about our work across our website.

Find out more about current volunteering opportunities

Find out more about current career opportunities 
 

Gender pay gap reports from previous years