Wolseley Gender Pay Gap Report 2024

One of our core Wolseley values is fairness and respect. We believe that regardless of how we identify, our background, or our circumstances, we all deserve the opportunity to develop our skills to deliver our full potential, whilst working in a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment. We are committed to ensuring that equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our business. 

This report outlines our gender pay gap and the actions we believe will help us to reduce the gap and further embed a truly inclusive culture at Wolseley. 

We are pleased that we continue to see a higher female representation in the business compared with last year, with women comprising 21.1% of the workforce compared to last year’s figure of 20.8%. This highlights some of the success against our commitments made in previous reports to continue to attract and retain female talent within Wolseley. 

In line with last year, Wolseley UK Limited continues to employ more than 250 employees and this report is based upon data from Wolseley UK Limited (referred to as ‘Wolseley’).

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the difference in mean and median pay between men and women. 

Gender pay gap reporting should not be confused with Equal Pay, which is a legal requirement and looks at whether a group of people carrying out similar duties are paid fairly compared to one another. Wolseley is an Equal Pay employer.

Wolseley's gender pay gap

We are delighted to report that our mean gender pay gap has reduced by 0.12% (from 1.5% last year) to 1.38% in this report. 

Our gender pay gap under the median calculation has also reduced by 0.11% (from 1.0% last year) to 0.89% in this report. 

We believe that the following continue to contribute towards our gender pay gap being substantially better than the national gap: 

• Our minimum pay rate was and continues to be set above the National Living Wage 
• All colleagues, regardless of age are paid our full adult pay rate, rather than the lower tiers permitted under the National Minimum Wage (including our apprentices) 
• An effective grading structure and disciplined pay management ensures consistency across all our business operations 

Whilst our mean pay gap has improved, we are not complacent and strive to ensure that we maintain and reduce both the mean and median pay gaps within Wolseley. 

Our gender bonus gap

For the reporting period April 2023 – March 2024, the proportion of men at Wolseley paid a bonus during the period was 47.1% compared to 61.0% of women. 

We have seen an increase in mean and median bonus gaps, with the mean bonus gap for this year being 32.09% and the median gap being 25.48%.

Salary quartiles

These are as follows:

Hourly pay quarter	Percentage of men	Percentage of women
Upper	81.1%	18.9%
Upper middle	78.2%	21.8%
Lower middle	78.9%	21.1%
Lower	77.6%	22.4%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merchanting is traditionally recognised as a male-dominated sector and we are continuing to improve our male-to-female ratio across the organisation.

How are we working to address this?

We will continue to improve the gender balance of our workforce by attracting the best female talent to the business, whilst encouraging and nurturing the talent we already have. 

We have a number of ongoing actions and initiatives to achieve this. 

We have:

• Participated in the FTSE Women Leaders review
• Enhanced maternity pay to support with the attraction and retention of women in the business
• Objectively reviewed all flexible working requests and challenged managers to consider alternative ways of working, which are supportive of the needs of all colleagues
• Continued hybrid working arrangements in parts of our business, to enable colleagues to achieve a better balance between work and home life
• Reviewed our induction process to better support colleagues in their first year and on their return to work from extended leave
• Placed greater focus on wellbeing within the business 

Additionally, we are continuing to focus on:

• Our website and social media platforms – keeping a focus on positive female representation, and utilising the internal collaboration platform for colleagues
• Identifying and removing any potential for unconscious bias through our training programmes
• Promoting a flexible approach to work – supporting part-time options, job-share and flexible working hours
• Issuing a new, comprehensive Manager Guidance Policy to raise awareness of menopause related issues and how to respond to them

In conclusion

We have made further progress on last year’s report, which we are proud to celebrate, however, we know we still have more to do. We welcome the opportunity to share the details of our gender pay gap so that we, along with other responsible companies, can strive to be representative of the communities in which we live and work.

Simon Gray
CEO Wolseley