Our commitment to support gender equality

At Gloucestershire County Council, we are committed to promoting positive action to close the gender pay gap. We are committed to equal opportunities and equal treatment for all employees. To ensure equal pay, the council uses Job Evaluation (JE) to determine the rates of pay for all posts.

The council uses two well recognised JE schemes and both schemes have been designed to ensure there is no gender bias in any of the job-related factors that they measure.

We are therefore confident that the rates of pay we set for jobs within the council are fully consistent with equal pay requirements.

We continue to encourage women to work at all levels in the council and offer a diverse and inclusive work environment. We offer a range of opportunities to work flexibly and actively promote these to all employees. These include the following flexible working practices and family friendly policies:

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and significant improvements in our technology offering have widened the scope of possibilities for efficient agile working and the council will continue to develop strategies to support different ways of working. The decrease in both the mean and median gender pay gap is a reinforcement of our commitment that as a large, local employer we are providing the framework in which women can progress up the career ladder.

Our agile working vision

We’re working towards being a council that empowers and enables our staff to work where, when, and how they choose – within a framework that meets our business needs and promotes a healthy work/life balance.

To support this, we have recently updated our flexible working hours scheme so that it better enables the council to be more responsive to individual and service needs. This will enable us to support closing our gender pay gap even further by ensuring we are an employer of choice and to aid in staff retention.