Bridging the Gender Pay Divide: Our Commitment to Equality

Today is Equal Pay Day – a national campaign led by the Fawcett society marking the reality that, overall, men in the UK have to work only 10.5 months in the year to get paid as the same as their women counterparts working the full 12 months, effectively meaning that women stop getting paid for the remainder of the year. Progress to close the gap has been slow, and unfortunately, the Global Gender Gap Report (WEF) recently concluded that, at the current rate of progress over the 2006- 2023 span, it will take 162 years to close the Political Empowerment gender gap, 169 years for the Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap, and 16 years for the Educational Attainment gender gap.

Recently, the BioIndustry Association (BIA) hosted an event, to celebrate women in biotech and address the impact of economic crisis on gender equality. Our very own Karen Nugent, Head of Project Delivery, participated as a panellist sharing her views as well as talking about how tranScrip is making a difference by having a strong female leadership presence, defying the usual story that the numbers have been telling across most industries for decades.

She said: “tranScrip is a different and unique company in many ways and gender equality is one of them. Here people are measured based on their skillsets and capabilities not their gender. We are rightly proud of our heritage when it comes to female leadership and equal pay. Over 65% of our managers, 60% of our Executive Leadership team, and 40% of our Board members are female. Moreover, over 60% of our top 10 most highly paid employees are female.”

So how is tranScrip different? And what can we share about our practices to help other business leaders close the gap faster?

Understanding the depth of the issue

The first step in addressing the gender pay gap, is actually acknowledging its existence and making an effort to understand it by looking at our own company data.  As the topic of the gender pay gap has gathered interest over recent years, scrutiny by investment bodies and regulators has increased to try to address the disparity, from requiring larger businesses to report on their gender pay statistics to setting targets for female representation on the Boards of listed companies. As a small business, tranScrip is not required to report its gender pay statistics; however, collecting and analysing this data so that we can scrutinise our own performance, is a choice we proudly make on an annual basis.

Taking action: Our commitment

Female leadership is in our DNA. The tranScrip group has been co-founded and led by several successful female leaders. These women are respected experts in their professional fields but, more than that, they have succeeded as entrepreneurs and as leaders, paving the way for others who follow their example.

Our focus is true talent and potential

Our people ARE our business – full stop. Leveraging their extensive experience in drug development they are uniquely placed to partner with clients and add value to their assets. tranScrip provides opportunities to work with multidisciplinary teams across therapeutic areas with a broad range of clients.  We are not prescriptive on location and we accommodate a wide range of working patterns, removing barriers that still tend to have a higher impact on females than on males.

Moving forward and paving the way to a strong tomorrow

The gender pay gap is a complex issue with deep roots in societal and organisational structures, but businesses like tranScrip show that change is possible. While much is said about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, what’s different about tranScrip is that our credentials in female leadership and entrepreneurship, our focus on talent at the expense of extraneous factors, and our desire to go above and beyond what we are required to do in order to challenge ourselves has naturally made us a destination organisation for talented female professionals in the life sciences industry.