Gender Pay Gap – reported figures for Independent Vetcare Limited

Gender Pay Gap Statement from Chief Executive Officer

At IVC Evidensia, we‘re committed to having workplaces where everyone feels fairly rewarded for their efforts and has equal access to development and career growth opportunities.

As in the wider veterinary profession, women make up the majority of our people, and we recognise that closing the gender pay gap requires ongoing focus and cultural change—both within our organisation and across the industry. As Europe’s largest veterinary group, we understand our responsibility to drive progress.

We have taken meaningful steps in the UK, including introducing structured pay bands for practice roles to ensure fair hiring and payroll decisions. We’ve also established clear career development pathways to support salary progression. Beyond this, we are actively working to improve female representation in senior leadership, including in our Group Executive Committee, with our UK Small Animal Clinical Board, for example, now entirely female.

While we’ve made strong progress, there’s more to do. Our commitment to bridging the gender pay gap remains unwavering, and you can read more about our efforts in this report.

Simon Smith, April 2025

All data as at snapshot date of 5 April each year

PROPORTION OF MALES AND FEMALES RECEIVING A BONUS

PROPORTION OF MALES & FEMALES BY PAY QUARTER



The figures in the table above reflect all roles across our UK business, with the gender distribution having a significant impact on the analysis. Due to the low proportion of men in the lower two pay quartiles, the median pay for men will consistently be higher than that for women. In 2024, the proportion of males compared to females has fallen in all pay quarters, as shown in the table above.

Overall, a significantly higher number of women than men occupy lower-paid roles - not just within IVC Evidensia but across the veterinary sector. This is especially pronounced in our practice teams, which represent the bulk of our workforce.

Across different job types and pay quartiles, we are confident that our approach to pay and rewards is based on objective and relevant criteria, ensuring that salaries for specific roles are aligned with the market. Since 2021, we have made substantial improvements to our pay and reward structure, introducing consistent pay standards across our whole UK network, ensuring competitive salaries, and providing clear guidelines for pay decision-makers.

A note on our Bonus Payment Gap

The distribution of men and women through our structure affects the bonus gap as much as the pay gap.

Overall, nearly six times as many women than men received some form of bonus in 2024. However, whilst the majority of men who received a bonus are in the top pay quarter, women receiving some form of bonus were distributed much more evenly through all pay quarters. As bonus payments in most sectors and professions are typically set by reference to underlying pay (for example, as a percentage of salary) this means the average and median bonus amounts paid to women are smaller than those paid to men.

For Gender Pay Gap reporting, bonus pay includes any monetary reward linked to profit sharing, productivity, performance, incentives, or commission. 

Our Bonus Payment Gap is significantly impacted by PHP (Pet Health Plan) team-based commission, which falls under this definition. These payments, historically distributed to practice team colleagues, were small - often below £5 per month. 

Because 88% of our UK workforce in scope for reporting is female, and most work in practice teams, the large number of small payments to women has a disproportionate effect on our bonus gender pay gap.

If we exclude these very small PHP commission sums from the 2024 gender pay gap calculations, the gap is reduced materially:



Achievements and initiatives since our last report

• We set a goal to have women in half of all senior roles by 2025 and for the second-year running we have exceeded this target, with women now holding 53% of senior roles. We will continue to work to ensure that our women employees feel supported at all stages in their career with IVC Evidensia and to create a pipeline of women talent for senior roles.
• Our Artemis International Leaders Programme is core to our aim to support the development of more women leaders. While we welcome both men and women to the programme, nominations should reflect the demographics of our company; therefore the majority of participants are women.
• In the UK, our Flexible Working Toolkit and Farm24 out-of-hours programme continue to ensure that flexible working is available across our business. We recognise that flexible working can be extremely important for colleagues of any gender, but know that it can also be key for some of our women colleagues to feel supported when balancing career and family life, and particularly when making life decisions.

We are committed to ensuring all employees are fairly rewarded for their work and have equal access to all opportunities. We continue to evolve our pay and reward, further reinforcing parity.