SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK: A Journey to Pay Equity

Name: Sue Langdon
Title: HR Systems Analyst
Organization: Suez Group
Industry: Waste management and resource industry

The SUEZ Group are a French company in the water, waste management and resource industry, committed to providing sustainable global solutions and services. To date, they have 90,000 employees worldwide, with 6,000 based in the UK. This case study will be focusing on the UK branch.

The Challenge
The waste management sector is closely aligned with the manufacturing sector. Since operational employees make up the majority of the workforce, SUEZ was experiencing Occupational Segregation – an uneven distribution of males vs females within the pay quartiles. SUEZ was keen to improve their Gender Pay Gap and also the representation of women within their workforce, in line with their inclusive values.

The Solution
Sue was already familiar with Gapsquare, having used it in her previous company for Gender Pay Gap reporting, when it first became mandatory. She and her colleague particularly liked the ease of use: being able to upload a dataset into the software and looking at the instant narratives produced, to help them understand their results and start planning impactful change. 

“I had seen a demo of Gapsquare at a conference. After trialing the free version, we were so impressed that we bought the full version. We felt confident we were getting our Gender Pay Gap reporting right with the software we received and the advice that came alongside it,” Sue said.

Results
SUEZ used the data from Gapsquare to monitor their Gender Pay Gap results year on year. They found that their Gender Pay Gap actually favoured women, despite being a predominantly male industry, as there was a higher proportion of women in the mid quartiles, clustered in higher paid administrative roles. Using this knowledge, alongside their Women’s Network Initiative, they were able to support existing female employees further and improve current hiring and recruiting practises in order to become more inclusive.

As a result, SUEZ have since seen an increase in the number of women in operational and driving roles. This meant SUEZ was able to create a fair solution for all their employees, as pay in the lower quartiles is now more balanced and the representation of women in largely male dominated roles has started to improve.

This represents SUEZ’s commitment to fair pay for their frontline workforce, who are mainly made up of men, but not at the expense of their female employees’ pay. “Using the yearly results from Gapsquare, we have intentionally focused on fair pay for all, which means increasing hourly pay rates for our lowest paid workers. We continue to be committed to pay our lowest paid workers 10 pence above the National Living Wage regardless of age,” Sue explained.

Next steps
SUEZ aims to continue to improve the representation of women within the organisation, as well as upholding their commitment to fair pay for all. They are now in the process of using new software features to look at their Ethnicity Pay Gap.

Sue’s advice for companies thinking about using Gapsquare for the first time:
“My advice would be to ensure your data set is asaccurate as it can be. Spending time to get it right and understanding it,ensures the results are also the best they can be.”

Sue’s final thoughts about using Gapsquare: “I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Gapsquare. We continue to be impressed with the upgrading of the system and the training given to help us understand the new functions available.”

“Over the years Gapsquare have continually upgraded their software. They provide lots of new features to enable companies to delve into their data and identify potential problems. For example, the ability to look at pay gaps besides gender. We are now in the process of using it for our ethnicity pay gap reporting.”

Sue Langdon, HR Systems Analyst