Gender Pay Gap – reported figures for Independent Vetcare Limited

Statement from Chief Executive Officer

At IVC Evidensia we are committed to ensuring all employees are fairly rewarded for their work and have equal access to all opportunities.

In pay terms that means fair and equitable pay policies and pay decisions for all employees. We said last year that we were evolving our pay and reward in the UK, further reinforcing parity – we continue to do that. We recognise that as Europe’s largest veterinary care provider, what we do impacts the veterinary profession overall.  

As our reported numbers show, women are the mainstay of our employees, as they are for the veterinary profession. Closing our gender pay gap will require long-term sustained focus from us all in the business and will reflect broader cultural change. 

The Board and I are fully committed to ensuring that we close the gender pay gap.

Simon Smith, April 2023
 
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 distribution of men and women in roles across our entire UK business greatly affects the statistics here. On the whole far more women than men are employed not just in IVC Evidensia but across the entire veterinary sector, and this is particularly true in the practice teams which make up the vast majority of our roles. We can see that the proportion of women in the top pay quarter of our business has remained stable.

Within each quartile and job type, we are confident that our reward structure is based on objective and relevant factors and that rates of pay for specific roles are in line with market norms. We have evolved our pay and reward significantly in the last year to ensure common standards of pay across the estate and competitive rates of pay compared to the market, particularly for our clinical teams.

Some of the initiatives being undertaken in the business:

• We have stated our intent to increase female representation in the senior management population to 50% by 2025 and we remain on track to achieve that
• To work towards that objective, we ensure that Group-level committees all have female representation and our recruitment policy for senior roles is to have at least one woman among the final candidates
• During 2022 we launched a pilot of the IVC Evidensia Artemis Leaders Programme, our first cross-company leadership programme for clinical staff. The objectives are to help meet our aspirations for gender balance in critical roles and to ensure a pipeline of future leaders. We are delighted that 54 participants were nominated from across 11 countries and are participating this year, 85% of which are women.
• In 2022, we undertook a full review of family friendly policies in UK. This included the launch of enhanced maternity pay, shared parental pay and adoption pay. We also introduced paid fertility leave for employees either receiving or recovering from fertility treatment, or supporting their partner.
• As a business where the majority of employees are women, it’s crucial we support women of all ages during their careers. Research has shown that as many as one in 10 women leave work because of symptoms of menopause (The Menopause and the Workplace report by the Fawcett Society, 2022). We want to support our employees and decrease these retention risks; we have trialled a number of menopause support initiatives during 2022 and are preparing to launch these more widely in 2023.