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About Briar Chemicals

Briar Chemicals Limited, Norwich, is the UK’s leading agrochemicals CDMO solutions provider and serves the world’s most innovative agrochemicals companies. Briar is an upper tier COMAH site and handles complex chemistries and employs around 260 people. The company operates from a 100-acre well-invested manufacturing site consisting of large-scale reactors, R&D facilities for process development and sufficient available space and infrastructure for future expansion.

At Briar we are committed to encouraging diversity and inclusion among our workforce. This is underpinned by two of our core values; integrity and teamwork.  We provide interactive face to face training for all employees to give a basic understanding of discrimination law and enhanced training for managers to understand legal obligations and best practice as well as giving managers a roadmap for managing equality, diversity and inclusion.

Gender Pay Gap Reporting

Gender pay gap reporting requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish the difference in the average pay and bonuses between all men and women in an organisation regardless of their role or seniority, at a given point in time.  Employers must report on six different measures.

  • mean (average) gender pay gap – the difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male full pay relevant employees and that of female full pay relevant employees
  • median (mid-point) gender pay gap – the difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full pay relevant employees and that of female full pay relevant employees
  • mean (average) gender bonus gap – the difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that of female relevant employees
  • median (mid-point) gender bonus gap – the difference between the median bonus pay paid to male relevant employees and that of female relevant employees
  • percentage of relevant men and women receiving bonus pay
  • quartile pay bands – the proportions of male and female full pay relevant employees in the lower, lower-middle, upper-middle and upper quartile bands

Gender pay should not be confused with Equal pay.

Gender Pay Gap Figures

Briar Chemicals annual gender pay gap report for the snapshot date of 5 April 2023. At the snapshot date there were 253 people within our workforce; 222 men (87.75%) and 31 women (12.25%).

The mean gender pay gap means that for every £1 a man received, a woman received 83p.
The median gender pay gap means that for every £1 a man received, a woman received 78p.
2022 was an unusual year for bonus payments due to the sale of the Company which resulted in additional bonuses for some senior staff. On an ordinary bonus year, the mean gender bonus gap would have been 16.63%.

The proportion of employees receiving a bonus:

All permanent employees are eligible for a bonus payment.  Specific eligibility criteria means not all employees received one; this may be related to performance, length of service or leaving the organisation before time of pay out.

Pay quartiles by gender

This table shows our workforce divided into four equal-sized groups based on hourly pay rate. Band A includes the lowest-paid 25% of employees (the lower quartile) and band D covers the highest-paid 25% (the upper quartile).


Why do we have a gender pay gap?

Legally, men and women must receive equal pay for:

  • the same or broadly similar work;
  • work rated as equivalent under a job evaluation scheme; or
  • work of equal value.

It is the policy of Briar Chemicals to provide equality of opportunities and fairness to our workers, regardless of gender, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, colour, nationality, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, having ‘spent convictions’, physical characteristics or appearance.

We have a clear policy of paying employees equally for the same or equivalent work, regardless of their sex (or anything else listed above).

We:

  • carry out regular reviews of pay, benefits and terms and conditions in line with market and internal benchmarks with the aim of addressing any unjustifiable inequalities;
  • Provide equal access to promotion and transfer opportunities, with new roles advertised visibly to all internal staff

We are confident that our gender pay gap is not because we pay men and women differently for the same or equivalent work. Instead, our gender pay gap is because men and women work in different roles and those roles have different salaries.

Across the UK economy, men are more likely than women to be in senior roles which are paid more highly than other roles at similar levels of seniority. We currently employ fewer women than men; females account for just under 12.5% of the workforce at the snapshot date and we currently have fewer women in senior roles which attract the higher salaries.

What are we doing to address our gender pay gap?

We are committed to doing everything we can to reduce the gap. However, we also know this is a difficult task. For example, we have no control over what people choose to study or the career choices that they make.

Over the next year, we will:

  • Increase our relationship with educational institutions and work closely to promote STEM based subjects, to raise young people’s awareness of the different career opportunities available within the chemical industry, to help remove any stereotypes;
  • Review Company policies to ensure they are family-friendly and designed to provide flexible and hybrid working
  • Improve unconscious bias in recruitment – recruitment procedures will be reviewed regularly to ensure individuals are treated on the basis of their relevant merits and abilities, and to encourage diverse representation of the labour market;
  • Job advertising will be reviewed to aim to bring job opportunities to the attention of the widest pool of appropriate applicants;
  • Marketing materials will be appraised to promote inclusivity
  • Monitor gender ratios in recruitment, development and turnover to understand
    • the number of men and women applying for jobs and being recruited;
    • the number of men and women applying for and getting promotions;
    • the number of men and women leaving our organisation and their reasons for leaving;

By themselves, none of these initiatives will remove the gender pay gap and it may be several years before some have any impact at all. In the meantime, we will continue to review our initiatives to measure their impact and adapt where necessary.

Declaration

I confirm that the information and data in this statement is accurate and calculated according to the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.

 

Signed                                                                          Chris Fazekas

Date. 19 March 2024

 

 

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