Gender Pay Gap Report 2025

As set out in Blick Rothenberg’s Pathway, our five-year strategy, we are committed to improving the diversity of our workforce across all levels by building a culture that’s genuinely inclusive, where everyone can fulfil their potential and individuality is celebrated.

The UK Government requires all employers with 250 or more employees to annually disclose their gender pay gap using the following metrics:

• Mean gender pay gap using hourly pay
• Median gender pay gap using hourly pay
• Mean bonus gender pay gap
• Median bonus gender pay gap
• Proportion of men and women receiving bonuses
• Proportion of men and women in each pay quarter

The data in our gender pay analysis, a snapshot as of 5th April 2025, has been calculated using the standard methodologies set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. It is based on FTE equivalent salaries for those who are part time.

Understanding Gender Pay

The gender pay gap is calculated by comparing the mean (average), and median (middle) hourly earnings of men and women based on the snapshot date of 5th April 2025. The mean and median bonus gap is based on bonus payments including performance, and other one-off payments received in the 12-months leading up to 5th April 2025.

The gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Equal pay is about ensuring that men and women performing the same or equivalent work are paid the same, whereas the gender pay gap is a statistical calculation which looks at the difference between the median and mean salaries of all females and all males across the organisation.

What impacts Gender Pay?

Gender minority representation (or lack of it) at both a senior level and lower level – i.e. the more females we have at the lower end of the pay scale, the lower the average salary relative to male employees.

Gender Pay Gap 2025 Summary

Blick Rothenberg has a mean hourly pay gender pay gap of 11.66% and a median hourly pay gender pay gap of 1.79%. We have seen positive movement since our last report with a reduction of 5.08% to our mean hourly pay gender pay gap, the largest reduction seen since 2020. We also saw a reduction of 1.09% to our median hourly pay gender pay gap.

There has been little difference in the number of females in the upper pay quartile (<1% difference), however there has been an increase in the number of women in the upper middle pay quartile (+3.6%), suggesting our actions to increase the diversity of Early Career hires and the progression of our female talent through the organisation and offering a possible explanation for the reduction in our hourly gender pay gap this year. A key aim for the coming year will be the development and retention of this growing talent pipeline to support their continued progression. While it is encouraging to see more women moving into the upper middle pay quartile, we remain fully committed to increasing the representation of women in the upper pay quartile, ensuring that female talent has clear pathways, support and opportunity to advance into our highest paid roles.

Blick Rothenberg is a limited company and our colleagues in Partner roles are employees of the business and are included in our gender pay gap data. In many of our competitor businesses, Partners are not classed as employees, and as a result, their pay data is not included in their statutory gender pay gap reporting, although is sometimes reported in other publicly available information. Taking that information into account, it is difficult to correctly compare ourselves to others in our industry.

This year, the proportion of men and women receiving a bonus increased by 4.28% and 6.62% respectively, with more women receiving a bonus when compared to men. However, this year have also seen a small increase in our mean bonus gender pay gap at 63.16% (up 1.44% since 2024) and an increase in our median bonus gender pay gap at 24.05% (up 10.72% since 2024). The increase in both our mean and median bonus pay gap can be explained by the structure of our workforce, with a greater number of men in our Partner and more senior roles than women on 5 April 2025. In these roles, bonus represents a higher proportion of total remuneration.

Our Gender Pay and Bonus Gap Data:

Proportion of Men and Women in Each Pay Quarter

Bonus recipients

Proportion of males and females receiving bonuses:

What Are We Doing to Close our Gender Pay Gap?

Blick Rothenberg is committed to continue to close our gender pay gap and we recognise that achieving this requires increasing the number of women in our senior roles and growing the talent within our organisation. Over the period of this snapshot, we have taken the following actions to address the drivers of our gender pay gap:

• We reviewed all our job descriptions to ensure the language was inclusive and attractive to talent from different backgrounds
• We introduced Leadership Behaviours, which created consistent expectations for leaders and were applied in promotions, talent conversations, and external recruitment, helping ensure equitable pathways into senior roles
• We launched our ‘Hear and Act’ whistleblowing campaign, reinforcing a culture of trust and openness that supported retention of diverse colleagues at all levels
• We invested in a cohort of qualified internal coaches to develop and support our talented people

Looking forward into the next period, from April 2025, we plan to undertake the following actions to continue to reduce our gender pay gap:

Attract Diverse Talent

• We will publicly communicate our aspirational gender representation targets and share an internal action plan to support delivery. By being transparent about our ambitions, we create clarity and accountability across the organisation, helping us stay on track and make more conscious, data informed decisions that advance gender balance at every level
• We will review and improve our leadership hiring strategy, supported by a newly created role in the Talent Acquisition team, to ensure senior hiring processes actively support a more balanced gender mix entering upper quartile roles
• We will introduce a dedicated Partner Careers page, giving prospective candidates the opportunity to learn more about our business and register their interest, helping us build a more diverse and engaged talent community
• We will conduct targeted market mapping for senior roles to proactively identify and prioritise talent from underrepresented groups
• We will review and enhance the language used throughout our recruitment processes to ensure it is as inclusive, clear and accessible as possible
• We will share more stories of our talented female leaders externally, including events run within our Women’s Network, to inspire and attract more women to Blick Rothenberg
• We will strengthen our commitment to the Disability Confident scheme, ensuring our recruitment, progression, and workplace adjustments processes are fully accessible. By removing systemic barriers faced by disabled colleagues and candidates, we also create more universally inclusive processes that benefit under represented groups more broadly

Assure Unbiased Selection

We will strengthen our data maturity in the recruitment space by collecting gender data for all candidates regardless of sourcing route. This will enable us to better understand fairness at every stage of the hiring process, identify where candidates disproportionately drop out, and take targeted action to improve equity and close the gender pay gap

Develop Diverse Talent

• We will bring together talented women from across the business to attend and potentially be nominated for the Women of the Future Awards and Summit, raising visibility and supporting their progression into senior opportunities
• We will launch and embed our first Group Senior Women’s Network, Women Forward, to build community, provide peer support and strengthen the pipeline of women progressing into senior roles
• We will strengthen Talent Review meetings across the firm to consistently review our employees and consider career paths, opportunities and development needs
• We will continue to support our people managers with training, resources and guidance from our new People Advisory team. Strengthening these conversations will help ensure fairer decision making, which is turn supports our efforts to reduce the gender pay gap
• We will introduce regular Check In conversations to better support ongoing conversations around development

Retain Diverse Talent

• We will create a Group Belonging Strategy, with a core focus on advancing gender balance across all levels of the organisation. As part of this, we will review three key people processes: leadership hiring, early careers recruitment and career conversations, with the aim of identifying and reducing opportunities for bias. This will help ensure fair access to opportunities, strengthen the pipeline of women progressing into senior roles, in turn supporting the continued reduction of our gender pay gap
• We will evaluate our current bonus allocation process and implement additional structure to further reduce bias
• We will begin Menopause Action Planning, strengthening our support for women at key life stages