Building a winning culture
Our people are our biggest asset and we work hard to create a culture where all individuals feel welcome and motivated to perform.
Further progress against our equity, diversity and inclusion targets
One year into our landmark five-year EDI strategy, we published the progress so far against our targets, which showed that PPL remains an industry forerunner in its approach to becoming a more equitable, diverse and inclusive place to work. At the April reporting window, our workforce was 62% male and 38% female, against a gender split goal of 50-50. The company’s senior leadership team – Executive Directors and Heads of Department – is just above gender parity, at 51% female.
Our ethnicity target was updated to reflect the latest census data (2021) for London and South East England, where most of our staff live. The target now stands at 65% white people and 35% non-white people. At the April reporting window, people declaring any ethnicity other than white made up 30% of PPL’s workforce, compared to 27% in 2022. The 2023 figure rises to 35% among the lower earning half of our team.
Despite falling under the threshold for the requirement to publicly report our gender and ethnicity pay gaps we continued to do so in 2023, marking seven years of gender pay gap reporting and two of ethnicity pay gap reporting. We also continue to advocate for greater transparency from other organisations across the industry as well.
The mean pay gaps – the average difference in pay – decreased for both gender and ethnicity between April 2022 and April 2023. The mean gender pay gap reduced to 5.4% in favour of men, compared to 11.7% in 2022. The mean ethnicity pay gap reduced to 30% in favour of white employees, from 39.8% in 2022. This gap, while narrowing, remains because the proportion of employees of non-white ethnicity is higher in the lower earning half of the workforce.
We also report on the median pay gaps within the organisation. The median gender pay gap decreased to 12.5% in favour of men, from 13.6% in 2022. The median gender pay gap is higher than the mean gap because there are a higher number of men than women in the organisation below leadership level.
Our median ethnicity gap increased to 23.6% in favour of white employees, from 17% in 2022. Again, this reflects the higher proportion of white employees in the upper half of the organisation (76%) than in the lower half (57.6%). The proportion of non-white employees in the upper-mid quartile has also fallen.
You can read more about our EDI strategy and targets on ppluk.com
Listening to our people
We ran our first all-employee survey since 2018, achieving an overall engagement score of 71%, against an external benchmark of 68%. The survey particularly highlighted the high motivation levels among employees, the quality of managers within the business, and their commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). The success of the office refurbishment, completed in May 2023, was also a key driver of employee satisfaction, and we are seeing an increase in employees wishing to return to the office for more of the week following the disrupted years through Covid.
The survey also helped us identify areas where we can work to improve our employer offering, and workstreams have been put in place to address these, such as focusing on internal career development opportunities and setting out a clearer vision for our teams.
Building a sustainable future
In March 2023, PPL launched a sustainability strategy which sets out our journey to reduce our overall emissions, aiming to achieve net zero status by 2050, in line with national and global targets.
Having completed an audit of our energy use, PPL has identified a number of short- and medium-term changes that will help to reduce our carbon emissions. These changes have resulted in an 8% reduction in our emissions for 2022 compared to 2021. Further changes were implemented during our office refurbishment in 2023 including changes to our lighting, double glazing and use of renewable energy.
Our efforts on sustainability, diversity and wellbeing work to ensure that, as a company, we take tangible steps to promote the values we champion.