In April 2017, the Government introduced new regulations relating to the gender pay gap (GPG) with the aim of encouraging UK businesses to take action to close any gap that exists. This year, around 9,000 employers in the UK across both private and public sectors will publish their GPG data.

In this report, we provide GPG information for ACNielsen which is our largest employing entity in the UK and, as a UK employer with over 250 employees, is subject to these regulations. Our GPG disclosure compares the average hourly pay for women to the average hourly pay for men across ACNielsen.

Since the publication of our 2017 GPG results, we have made great strides to close the gap even further. Our results for 2018 show that the median hourly rate for women is 2.9% less than the median hourly rate for men. The mean hourly rate for women is 9.5% less than the mean hourly rate for men. On bonus pay, the gap between both the mean and median bonus paid to women compared to men is 26.5% and 26.4% respectively.

The primary driver of our GPG is that more of our senior roles are held by men. This is an imbalance we are aware of and have been actively working to rectify with a number of ongoing initiatives. Since 2016, we have reduced our median and mean GPG by 6 percentage points and we are committed to further reducing it. At a global level, our CEO David Kenny has signed the  LEAD (Leading Executives Advancing Diversity) Network CEO Pledge which underscores Nielsen’s commitment to increase the number of women in senior leadership roles globally.

We are proud of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, which has been recognised with our appointment, once again, to this year’s list of the UK’s Top 50 Inclusive Employers, ranking 19th, up six places from last year. We are also an active member of the UK National Diversity Awards as a sponsor and working alongside a strong network of companies who share the same passion and commitment to diversity within the workplace.

We promote an inclusive culture to attract and retain the best talent. Our compensation philosophy is based on paying fairly and consistently based on size of role and individual performance – it is gender neutral.

Here are some of the key actions we have taken:

We regularly assess overall pay, and decisions made about pay, for men and women in like roles to ensure that we are living up to our standards of fairness and consistency.

• Parity in recruiting: For the first time, our associate population is made up of more women than men and we’ve seen more women progress into senior roles over the last year. Recruitment interview training, unconscious bias training, and the monitoring of gender intake across the business continues.
  
  
• Attracting and retaining more women into senior roles: We work closely with Women In Nielsen (WIN), an employee resource group dedicated to supporting, connecting and empowering women to build successful and fulfilling careers within Nielsen. They advise on our policies, procedures and progression plans to ensure equality. We implemented a mentoring programme to connect high performing men and women across the business and since 2017, we have seen a 12 percentage point improvement in the gender balance within senior roles in Nielsen UK.
  
  
• Returning to work: We continue to offer a return to work bonus to encourage women back to work after maternity. We also operate a Return to Work Buddy Network to better support their transition back into work.
  
  
• Creating a positive environment: We continue to offer and promote flexible and agile working practices so both men and women can better balance home and work commitments. 49% of UK employees now enjoy flexible working. We promote a fully inclusive and diverse workplace and live by our ethos of ‘You can be You’, encouraging all of our associates to bring their whole selves to work.

We are continuing to improve and through the work we’ve been doing over the last three years, we have a better understanding of what needs to be addressed and how we will achieve it.

Cathy Earle, HR Director UK & Ireland

We confirm the data reported is accurate. In accordance with the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, AC Nielsen Limited is required to carry out Gender Pay Gap Reporting.