At Wolseley, one of our core company 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.

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.

I am pleased to report that we continue to have a similar female representation in the business compared to last year, with women comprising 20.8% of the workforce compared to last year’s figure of 21.1%.

Wolseley Group Limited wholly owns several operating legal entities, and all except one (Wolseley UK Limited) employ less than 250 employees. In line with last year, Wolseley UK Limited continues to employ more than 250 employees and so this report’s focus is on Wolseley UK Limited, referred to as ‘Wolseley’.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the difference in mean (average) and median pay between men and women. The median calculation means if all male and female salaries were listed highest to lowest, we would look at the two 'middle' salaries and compare the difference between the two.

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.

Our gender pay gap

As with last year, I am delighted to state our mean gender pay gap has reduced by 0.95% (from 1.38% last year) to 0.43% in this report.

Our gender pay gap under the median calculation has improved this year by 1.54% (from 0.89% last year) to -0.65% in this report.

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

• Our minimum pay rate 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 National Minimum Wage
• An effective grading structure and disciplined pay management ensures consistency across our distributed business operations

Our gender bonus gap

For the reporting period April 2024 – March 2025, the proportion of men at Wolseley paid a bonus during the period was 28.7% compared to 28.3% of women. This is a significant decrease compared to last year (for both men and women) due to many bonus schemes being linked to group results which were not achieved. This has led to 28% of employees receiving a bonus compared to 50% last year.

We have seen a decrease to the mean bonus gap, with the mean gap for this year being 22.7% (from 32.1% last year); and the median bonus gap this year is higher for women than men by 14.1%.

Salary quartiles

The legislation requires us to identify our overall pay range, divided into equally sized quartiles, and populated with the proportion of men and women colleagues in each quartile. This is set out below:
 

Hourly pay quarter	Percentage of men	Percentage of women
Upper	80.5%	19.5%
Upper middle	76.9%	23.1%
Lower middle	77.0%	23.0%
Lower	82.2%	17.8%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merchanting is traditionally recognised as a male-dominated sector but as demonstrated, we are continuing to work hard to improve our male-to-female ratio across the organisation. We know that many factors play into this, and it is not something we can change overnight. We remain committed to improving this ratio, but it may take some time before we see significant change. We have seen a material shift (between 2% and 3%) compared to last year in the percentage of women in the Upper, Upper Middle, and Lower Middle quartiles.

How are we working to improve the gender balance?

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

We have a number of actions and initiatives to achieve this, but as with any change programme, sustained improvement takes time.

We have:

• Participated in the FTSE Women Leaders review, on a voluntary basis since being invited as one of the fifty largest private companies within the UK
• Increased the number of applications from women by using better advertising campaigns
• 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 some parts of our business, to enable colleagues to achieve a better balance between work and home life
• Reviewed our induction 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 encouraging female role models within the business
• Identifying and removing any potential for unconscious bias and mandatory unconscious bias training in our onboarding process for all Managers
• Promoting a flexible approach to work – supporting part-time options, job-share, and flexible working hours
• Further developing diversity and inclusion training as part of our mandatory suite of core training for all colleagues, including for example, menopause awareness

In conclusion

We have made further progress on last year’s report, which we are proud to celebrate, however, we know we 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 Group