Turn your Pay Gap Data into Insights and Actions with Statistical Thinking (6 hours)

Course Details

To close a pay gap you have to do three things:

1. Specify where you want to be in the future.
2. Measure where you are today.
3. Identify the most effective way of getting to where you want to be.

All 3 steps require the use of statistical thinking and statistical methods.  Of course, other skills and processes are also needed but they cannot succeed on their own without the help of statistics.

The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to pay gap analytics. It will help participants interpret gender, ethnicity or disability pay gap data and identify how to close a gap using statistical thinking and the basic functions of Microsoft Excel.

This course is tailored to HR & other professionals with little or no statistical skills and will teach the basics required to get started.

Who should attend this course?

Anyone who has to produce, present and report on gender (or ethnicity/disability) pay gap data and develop and track actions to close pay gaps.  It does not matter which department you work in, if you are any way involved in your employer’s pay gap reporting process and are struggling with how to calculate the figures in the first place and/or to understand what they mean for your employer, then this is the course for you.

Course details

The course will run online and will be split into two 1/2 day sessions on Thursday 10th & Friday 11th November 2022.  Both days will start at 0930 and finish at 1300.  Our preference is to use Teams but we are happy to use Zoom if a majority of delegates prefer to use this.  Please state in your booking which you would prefer to use.

Please note, I will offer the first 4 people to book a place the option to run the course as a full day session instead on either day starting at 0930 and finishing at 1700.  Any changes will be communicated on this page.

The course fee is £500 (including VAT) per person. 

Course prerequisites

In order to get the most out of this course, participants will require:

1. Completion of a pre-course questionnaire before attending the course.
2. An awareness of the basic requirements of gender pay gap reporting.
3. Some familiarity with employment practices that could help close pay gaps.
4. A computer with Microsoft Excel installed. A spreadsheet with the data to be analysed during the course will be emailed to you before the course.
5. Be comfortable with the basic operations of Microsoft Excel such as entering data, undertaking simple calculations such as the average and producing simple charts.

It is important to note that this course is not a training course in Microsoft Excel or the details of the legislation about gender pay gap reporting hence why some familiarity with these is needed.  However, you will learn additional details about both of these topics during the course.

What you will learn?

The course begins with the calculation of the mandatory statistics that you have to submit in your statutory gender pay gap report and we will explore what they do and do not tell you i.e.

• Mean and median gender pay gap & bonus gap
• The four pay quarters and the gender breakdown within each

The course then introduces you to additional ways to make your figures more meaningful and easier to interpret.  These methods can also be used to identify the most effective way to close a gender (or ethnicity/disability) pay gap once you have specified where you want to be.  Specifically:

• How to plot your results in a variety of chart formats.
• How to interpret your results especially your pay quarter data.
• How to identify where more in-depth analysis may be worthwhile.
• How to prepare and interpret a year on year comparison.

Having worked out where your organisation is today and why you have a pay gap, the course will then help you to figure out what “success” looks like for your employer in the future, including:

• How to work out what no gender pay gap would look like for your employer.
• How to identify if that goal is achievable in the next few years by analysing the pay gaps of other employers.
• Using the above two steps to specify what your goal looks like in terms of the mandatory statistics and any additional statistics.

Finally, using the tools we covered earlier for understanding our pay gaps in more depth, we can work out the most effective way to achieve our goals, specifically:

• How to identify the key drivers of your pay gaps
• How to separate the internal drivers from external drivers
• How long it will take you to close your pay gap if all goes to plan
• How to work out which statistics will need to be tracked over time and thus should be included in your action plan.

The course will have ample opportunities for you to practice the calculations in Microsoft Excel and will introduce you to a spreadsheet template which you can use for your own data both during and after the course.

Your course instructor

Nigel Marriott is an Independent Statistician and fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.  He has been running basic statistics courses aimed at non-statisticians for 17 years.  Feedback has consistently noted that Nigel has a rare ability to explain what looks like complicated statistics in a simple manner that makes it easy for you to understand and apply what you are learning.

Find out what previous course attendees think of Nigel.

Nigel also blogs extensively on issues of diversity and pay gaps and you can find all his blogs here.

1-on-1 Coaching for the same price!

If you would prefer 1-on-1 coaching on Pay Gap Analytics, we offer this for the same price of £500 (including VAT) but for 3 hours instead of 6 hours.  Click here to find out more details.

Other Training Courses in Statistics

We offer a wide range of statistical training courses covering numerous topics.  We provide in-house training as well as public courses like this one.  You can find out more details here.

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