Today, as part of WPP’s gender pay gap announcement, J. Walter Thompson has also uploaded the gender pay gap figures for JWT London Group Ltd.

James Whitehead, CEO at J. Walter Thompson London, said: “These numbers are obviously disappointing and we are determined to improve them. Where we’ve given real focus with initiatives over the past 18 months, we’ve seen real change in attracting great young female talent into the agency. Now we need to build on what we have started with further actions to make the same degree of change at the more senior levels. We understand it won’t be corrected overnight, but we will be constantly measuring our progress against these activities and will be held accountable by our employees every step of the way.”

The agency group has also produced a full report published on their website here, delivering the numbers and outlining the existing diversity and inclusion plans they have been implementing across the past 18 months, as well as the new initiatives they will be delivering immediately, in the near future and longer term to change these numbers. 

Also live on their website is the WPP Gender Gap Report.

Please see below for their statement of results, and the actions towards change they are committing to.

JWT Group Ltd’s average (mean) Gender Pay gap is 38.8% and our median gap (the midpoint in the ranges of women and men’s pay) is 44.7%.

While the entire J. Walter Thompson Group Ltd is evenly split in terms of gender (49% male and 51% female), a greater proportion of our junior staff (the lower quartiles 3 and 4) are female and a greater proportion of our senior staff (the higher quartiles 1 and 2), who have higher salaries, are male. This is the most significant factor driving the gender pay gap.

- Quartile 4        71:29 Male Female

- Quartile 3        60:40 Male Female

- Quartile 2        29:71 Male Female

- Quartile 1        35:65 Male Female

Our gender pay gap reflects data from employees who work at J. Walter Thompson Group Ltd –the UK-based legal entity that includes staff beyond JWT London, including from JWT Regional, JWT Global, JWT Company and WPP Team Leaders.

A gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of all men and women in an organisation. This is a separate issue to equal pay, which is the legal requirement for people carrying out the same or similar work to be paid equally, regardless of gender.

We want to reassure everyone that our people are recruited, promoted, and paid based on their individual skill and experience. We do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, age or any other factors.

For the first time, companies with more than 250 employees located in the UK are now required by the government to report data on their gender pay gap. This data is a snapshot of the organisation from April 2017.

The gender pay gap is the difference (mean and median) in hourly rate of pay between all men and all women in an organisation, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings – at the snapshot date of April 5, 2017.

 

The mean pay gap is the difference in the average hourly rate of men’s and women’s pay.

 

The median pay gap is the difference between the midpoints in the ranges of men’s and women’s pay.

 

The gender pay quartiles show the proportion of men and women in different pay bands, with the workforce divided into four equal parts (quartiles).

 

Equal pay looks at the same job or jobs of equal value meaning men and women being paid the same salary for carrying out the same or similar work, which is a legal requirement.

1. All candidate shortlists are gender mixed.

2. We replaced our Graduate recruitment scheme with the Pioneers Programme. During this reimagining, we introduced a blind selection stage, removed the requirement to have a degree and broadened the pipeline that we had traditionally used to recruit from. This led immediately to increased diversity on that programme.

3. We launched Young Tribes, which took the Female Tribes thinking into schools, to inspire girls and young women to learn about the industry. Our lower quartile data show that we have been successful at encouraging more women into our agency.

4. We are working to attract more female creatives through scholarships and awards, such as the Helen Landsdowne Resor Scholarship and the YES Awards for placement teams.

1. We commit to gender balanced interview panels for all roles and that all hiring managers will be required to attend selection, interview, and unconscious bias training in 2018.

2. We will promote our vacancies internally so that development opportunities are not missed out by our employees.

3. We will use gender neutral copy in all recruitment campaigns and stipulate in all adverts that flexible working arrangements are available to all candidates at point of hire. 

1. LeaderShe – A three-day programme supporting female leadership for senior JWT women across Europe, giving them the skills, confidence and resilience needed to thrive individually and collectively and the encouragement and support to raise their ambition and achieve their goals.

2. WPP Stella programmes that offer leadership coaching and training for women.

3. IPA Women of Tomorrow Awards (this year we have four women shortlisted, more than any other agency in the industry) and WACL Future Leader Awards support.

1. Over the next year, we will broaden LeaderShe into a Female Future Leaders program and launch it across the agency.

2. We will implement targeted development schemes to advance women to senior positions in line with addressing that imbalance – e.g. women in creative department leadership roles is a key area of focus.

3. We will create a coaching and mentoring program for senior leaders to support the business in adopting news ways of working and to help embed the changes that we are making.

 

1. The whole agency undertook diversity & inclusion (unconscious bias) training – a specifically designed course to help all staff better understand the unconscious bias in what we do, what we say, how we work and how we play (being ‘welcomed, valued, respected and heard’).

2. We launched JWT Family – a group created by JWT parents that delivers recommendations to the agency for achieving a much more realistic work-life balance.

3. We introduced an enhanced Paternity and Maternity policy.

1. We will hold follow-up diversity and inclusion workshops to maintain the headway we have made on improving the diversity and inclusion experience for all employees.

2. We will not tolerate behaviour that does not sit with our inclusivity values.  

3. We commit to continuing to work with Creative Equals on enhancing our Creative talent and will start on a pathway towards reaching a recognised diversity standard with a recognised external organisation.

4. We will create a diversity working group with diversity champions representing underrepresented groups based on gender, race, LGBT, and disability to help guide our activity.

5. We will look outside of advertising to see what strategies have been successful in other industries, and adapt them to suit our agency.

6. We will update our employees on a quarterly basis on our progress against these goals.

7. We will track our progress toward reducing our gender pay gap biannually on our website.

8. We will further enhance our Paternity and Shared Parental leave policies. 

9. We will support the business in adopting new ways of working to discourage ‘presenteeism’ and to truly embrace a flexible working culture.