WGEA Employer Statement to Gender Pay Gap

The below statement is in support of our Gender Pay Gap Executive Report published by the WGEA (Workplace Gender Equality Agency). The WGEA is an Australian government agency and the outcomes from the Gender Pay Gap Executive Report is based on employees located in Australia. Woods Bagot is committed to addressing diversity and inclusion, including gender equity, across all regions in which we operate.

Woods Bagot is committed to achieving gender equity across its workplace and are actively reviewing its structure and processes to foster a culture of equality.

Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is important as it creates: stronger employee engagement; increased employee retention and productivity; enhanced design outcomes; and, improved financial performance.  Ultimately achieving equitable outcomes for everyone is simply the best thing Woods Bagot can do to support its entire workforce.

Our D&I Mission Statement as outlined in our Diversity and Inclusion plan states – “To deliver a profound shift in the history of architecture and design that recognises and promotes full diversity to enrich the quality of our culture and its outputs.”

For 2022-2023 our gender pay gap across our full workforce is as follows:

• Median Total Remuneration pay gap is 9.4% (in favour of men).
• Median Base salary pay gap is 10.4% (in favour of men).

Women represent 51% of our total workforce with most of the female representation (65%) occurring in our more junior team members.  Our senior female representation is at 43% in our upper levels, or what we would consider our leadership team.  Senior female representation continues to be an area of focus where we actively advocate, monitor, invest in and develop our female leaders. 

Over this reporting timeframe, there were 452 employees included (and located in Australia). Of the 452 employees, 115 employees were categorised as Managers (Leaders), 328 employees were categorised as Professionals and 9 employees were categorised as Clerical and Administrative workers.  These numbers include Principals, Graduates, Casuals, Part-time and fixed term Contractors.

When comparing our results to our Industry Group, our gender pay gap is less than the industry comparison and has the lowest gender pay gap overall against our industry comparison group.

• Median Total Remuneration for WB is 9.4%, industry comparison group is 19.7% (difference of 10.3%).
• Median Base Salary for WB is 10.4%, industry comparison group is 19.2% (difference of 8.8%).

While we are pleased to be leading our industry, we acknowledge there is still more action required to achieve a better result for our current employees, future employees and our clients.  We continue to review all processes that impact representation, pay and equity issues. For example, according to the most recent Parlour Census report 2001 – 2021, in 2021 women represent 35% of the architecture industry, a 15% increase since 2001. Our graduate program ensures equal (50%) or higher representation of women to ensure our future pipeline of female talent. 

We continue to monitor the pay gap by continuously reviewing our internal salary and gender composition to achieve improved gender equity across the organisation. This includes new hire processes, performance evaluations and internal promotions.  Our internal reviews have identified three drivers which have influenced our metrics and the gender pay gap.

1. Pay Discrepancy between Architecture and Interior Design

As a design firm we predominantly employ Architects and Interior Designers. There is a pay difference between the two disciplines with Architecture being a higher paid discipline in comparison to Interior Design. This is due to the nature of work, charge out rates and industry / market norms.

There is a higher representation of women in Interior Design in Woods Bagot with 88% of Interior Designers being female. As females are over-represented in the industry, this will have a continuous impact on pay equity. We continue to review and monitor both disciplines individually and combined with an aim to increase male representation in the Interior Design discipline.

2. Strong Representation of Female Graduate of Architecture

Each year Woods Bagot undertakes a graduate intake program to build our talent pipeline.  Across our five Australian studio’s we employ both Graduates of Architecture and Interior Design. During this process we aim to achieve 50/50 representation of both male and female within Architecture and Interior Design.  Over the past few years this we had an over-representation of female graduates which feeds into the overall gender pay gap as female representation is much higher across our junior teams.

3. Lack of Female ‘Managers’ (Leaders)

We regularly review our policies and benefits for senior females to encourage career progression into team leadership roles.  Currently, there is a gender imbalance with females performing 41% of management (leadership) roles and 54% of females performing non-leadership roles.  We are focused on improving our employee offering by creating supportive return from parental leave programs, flexible working arrangements and pay parity for all part time employees and the creation of opportunities for females to take design and team and project leadership roles. Further, we continue to review our performance evaluation, promotions and new hire processes to reduce systemic impediments and bias to achieve better outcomes for our female employees.

Businesses that embrace diversity and inclusion perform better. We continuously analyse, enhance our diversity and inclusion initiatives.  For us, the benefits extend to the work we do, the communities which we impact as well as benefiting our employees and improved commercial outcomes.

We will continue to review our Gender Pay Gap analysis according to the WGEA guidelines, for the 2023-2024 reporting period. From these findings we will implement further actions across the business with a focus on reducing our workforce gender pay gap and increase representation of female leaders.