As an Australian-owned independent technology services company, our aim is to change the way the world works for the better.
When it comes to gender equality, our approach is no different. In our own small way, we aim to positively impact our community, our team and our clients by providing opportunities to address the gender imbalance across technology careers.
Our diversity and inclusion strategy outlines a number of actions to attract, retain and provide opportunities for females and gender diverse individuals both entering tech careers for the first time, and at a senior leadership level. Some of these actions impact our current pay gap negatively in the short term, however they will in the long term help us close the gap.
Our gender pay gap and business context
We keep pay fair and simple, and review salaries for gender equity quarterly against the market. Each team member is remunerated fairly and equally for the role they contribute, which means we pay men and women in comparable roles equally. In addition, we do not negotiate salaries to ensure that people who are better or tougher negotiators of salary do not benefit at the expense of those who are not. We do not pay financial incentives (including bonuses or commissions) for any roles including sales and leadership positions. Our model is designed to prevent gender from having any impact on salary decisions.
Our gender pay gap is similar to other businesses in our industry, largely driven by a smaller representation of women in senior leadership and sales positions, higher representation of women in entry-level positions, and the overall female representation in the composition of our workforce.
Our 2022-23 gender pay gap
Our highly-effective emerging talent trainee program, focused on fostering pathways for females and gender diverse individuals to enter the technology workforce for the first time, has increased our gender pay gap in the short-term, while lifting the overall representation of women across our business. We knew the initial impact this would have from a gender pay gap perspective, however it is important to our business that we play a role in strengthening the talent pipeline to create sustainable change and cultivate female tech talent for the future.
We are proud to have introduced 83 females and gender diverse individuals to tech careers since establishing this program, 92% of whom have gone on to receive permanent offers from Mantel Group and are valuable team members in paid permanent employment.
Further, three of our four recent executive-level appointments were women, all promoted internally as a result of succession planning initiatives.
We are encouraged by the improvement in our average gender pay gap, which sits above the industry and national average. This demonstrates that our significant investment and efforts in developing emerging female talent and appointing more women into senior leadership roles in our business are working.
We’ve made progress that we are proud of, but there is certainly more we need to do in improving outcomes for females in technology and closing the gender pay gap in our industry. Moving forward, a key focus for us will be creating, attracting and retaining female leaders in our business.
Drivers of our gender pay gap
There are three key drivers contributing to our gender pay gap:
- The underrepresentation of women across the tech industry is reflected in our workforce composition. We are not unique in facing this challenge.
- Smaller representation of women in senior leadership, technology and sales positions in our business. A key focus area for us is creating, attracting and retaining female leadership. We still have a way to go, however we have made tangible action in recent years through succession planning, resulting in three of the last four executive level positions being filled by women appointed internally.
- Higher representation of women in early-career roles in our business, as a direct result of our female-focused trainee and accelerator programs. 100% of our trainee roles during the reporting period were filled by female candidates, and over half of all entry level opportunities were filled by women.
Mantel Group’s Diversity and Inclusion plan:
Create Gender Diverse Talent
- Traineeship for women & gender diverse people.
- External partnerships including relationships with female-focused training and certification programs, and sponsorship of university student societies.
- Engaging with community groups such as Women in Digital to promote our gender diverse leaders and participate in community knowledge sharing and mentorship.
Attract Gender Diverse Talent
- Creating partnerships with organisations such as Work180 to enhance our efforts in targeted recruitment within women & gender diverse groups.
- Enhancing our recruitment processes to ensure inclusivity and diversity at every stage. This includes actively promoting an inclusive culture through flexible work arrangements, ensuring inclusive language in our job advertisements, and maintaining a gender diverse interview panel.
- Active talent pooling of women in tech leadership and engineering roles.
Retain gender diverse talent
- Regular anti-sexual harassment and bystander intervention training for all team members and leaders
- Regular unconscious bias and cultural interview training for all team members involved in the recruitment process
- Equal paid parental leave regardless of tenure or gender, extra paid health leave for birth giving parents to recover from childbirth. Paid leave for miscarriage, stillbirth, IVF, adoption and fostering.
- Superannuation continuation through paid and unpaid parental leave.
- Flexibility in work location and hours enabled by our principle-led approach
- Creating career pathways that are accessible to all team members. For the reporting period, 16% of all women in the business were promoted, compared to 14% of all men in the business which demonstrates our approach is working to create balance in accessibility of career pathways and development.
Create gender diverse leadership
- Executive-level succession planning to include at least one internal and one external female candidate. All Executive-level roles appointed internally have been female.
- Sponsoring and mentoring female talent.
Attract and retain gender diverse leadership
- Supporting leadership development and recognition
- Female leadership at industry meetups / panels
- Talent pooling senior female leaders
- Continued efforts to ensure retention of female leadership (females represented 20% of turnover across all senior technical, leadership and sales roles for this reporting period).
