According to Lucy Franklin, Managing Director of Accordance VAT, this is disappointing, and has prompted responses ranging from outrage about the results to despair about the process, with a healthy dose of weak excuses thrown in for good measure.
In the criticisms and reporting, we run the risk of getting mired in the process, not the impact. Gender Pay Gap reporting represents an immense opportunity to identify if and where there are issues within a business. Visibility is the first step towards progress – and the gender pay gap is an issue we need progress on.
That said, I know that adopting new reporting obligations can be onerous – finance is full of filing and submissions, and Accordance is no stranger to mandatory deadlines. But in this instance, the benefits outweigh the administrative burden. Gender pay gap reporting offers the potential to identify, at every level of a business, where inequalities lie. Whilst this may appear a redundant statement, the lack of progress in gender equality in the workplace over recent decades can attest to the necessity of an issue being recognised, being visible, and being acted on.
This is why Accordance has made the decision to publish our gender pay gap statistics, despite being well beneath the legal threshold for reporting. I want Accordance VAT to play a role in changing a historically male dominated sector. Finance and professional services companies boast a huge number of talented, bright, determined women. Many of these women have great careers in support functions, but those shouldn’t be the only avenues open to them. Financial and professional services organisations are unfortunately disproportionately dominated by men in the more senior positions, and this needs to change. Reporting on our Gender Pay Gap may not affect the systemic issues, but it is a step towards addressing inequality more widely as well as setting the bar for other businesses. We want to lead the way in our sector, and that means voluntarily putting ourselves forward, celebrating our successes where we find them but being the first to highlight where progress is needed.
Publishing our results is just the first step. Having identified that our mean pay gap sits at 12.8% and our median pay gap at -3.5%, we know that we’re doing better than some of our larger competitors in the sector, but we can do more. Publishing our figures shows our commitment to tackling this gap, as do the range of measures we have put in place around recruitment, training, job shadowing, and progression policies. These policies don’t just relate to gender diversity, but also diversity in terms of ethnicity, culture, physical ability, health and mental health.
Fundamentally, greater equality in our sector is about much more than just an improvement in statistics. Finance drives the world – and thus has a significant impact on how lives are led. We need to attract the best and the brightest minds shaping this future – and we need people from different walks of life with a seat at the table. Women need to be as key as men in determining the shape and course of finance, and how it affects economies and shared futures. Again, publishing our statistics cannot affect global trends and practices, but it does demonstrate our commitment to equality, and our determination to reshape the sector we work in.
I urge other businesses below the threshold to join us – to publish statistics for staff and for the wider world, and to identify where progress needs to be made. Reporting and publishing on the picture of an organisation offers an immense opportunity to recognise where problems are, and in doing so shape and improve them for the benefit of everyone. Equality requires commitment and a will to change, but the benefits of a more diverse workforce will be felt both in and outside of the financial and professional services sector.
Iwoca has found that female applicants are 18% more likely to repay small business loans on time than their male counterparts. Women-led small businesses make up an estimated 20% of iwoca’s customers and it has supported an estimated 2,400 women business owners in the UK with almost £50 million in lending since its launch in 2012.
iwoca uncovered the data in response to a study by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which found that a quarter of female small business owners cite the ability to access traditional funding channels as a key challenge, with many relying on alternative sources, such as crowdfunding, personal cash and credit, for growth.
While this technology-driven risk platform draws on thousands of data points to make credit decisions, gender is not included. iwoca’s data scientists were able to calculate gender-based statistics on loan repayment rates by checking customer application forms for self-identified female titles and then comparing the approximate default rates for both cohorts.
Christoph Rieche, Co-founder and CEO of iwoca, said: “More can be done to narrow the entrepreneurial gender gap in the UK. Making it easier for women to access business funding would go a long way to achieving that. Sadly, the reality is that banks are withdrawing critical finance from across the entire small business sector and unless the Government takes action to encourage greater competition that will allow alternative providers to fill the hole, women will continue to be at a greater disadvantage from an unfair system, regardless of their higher propensity to repay on time.”
(Source: iwoca)
It’s a discussion that has been ongoing since business was a thing. Why should the boss be paid more than his/her employees? Here Chris Abbass, co-founder of Talentful, delves deep into the considerations to make when posing this question.
As the founder of a fast-growing business, I can attest to the levels of stress, sacrifice and sleepless nights executives go through to build and run their companies. At an executive level, you are expected to be available 24hrs a day and have a huge amount of responsibility for the successes, but also any failures your business may go through. Further, individuals who set up businesses take on an immense amount of risk – they have much less security, and put themselves at risk of potential failure if the business does not go to plan, which can greatly damage their reputation.
When it comes to CEOs and those at C level positions, though they did not start the business, they have the success of it resting on their shoulders. We have seen many individuals at executive level get fired for things that have gone wrong without the bat of an eyelash. Executives are in positions with the highest risk and are held accountable for anything that goes wrong or right in the organisation. Because of this, I believe that their pay should be reflective of their successes and failures.
Pay, at the executive level, should always be in line with how well the business is doing, how successful they are, and how much value the individual is bringing the business. If the business is performing well this should be reflected in executive pay. Conversely, if an organisation’s performance is very bumpy and inconsistent, then CEOs should not be taking home huge pay checks and bonuses.
An example of when executive pay has gone tremendously wrong was during the economic crisis when big bankers were taking home massive bonuses while firms were failing and people were losing their jobs and homes. As a business founder, I believe this is unacceptable and suggests individuals taking advantage of their position and thus their pay. This should never happen, but on the other hand, if banks and institutions are doing very well and are creating a lot of money for the economy, then executives undoubtedly deserve their large pay checks and bonuses. Overall, executive pay should reflect on how well the individual is doing. If you are making losses for the business and are putting your employees out of jobs, you should not be taking home a massive salary.
Executive pay should be an accurate reflection of the amount of work and pressure the individual takes on and should be proportionate to the size and profitability of the business. If a company is losing money, then this should be reflected in executive pay, and conversely, if the company is over-performing those at the top should reap the rewards.
What is the disruption gap? How does technology and communication affect your end of year figures? How can you oversee all processes without a digital transformation? This week, Finance Monthly heard from Matt Fisher, VP of Marketing at Snow Software, who gives us all the answers and then some.
With digital transformation becoming ever more crucial to business success, the way organisations procure IT is changing. “In 2016, just 17% of IT spending is controlled outside of the IT organization. That represents a significant decline from 38% in 2012. By 2020, Gartner predicts that large enterprises with a strong digital business focus or aspiration will see business unit IT increase to 50% of enterprise IT spending.” [1] Technology budgets are moving away from a central technology department towards being the responsibility of the business unit using it. From HR procuring its own payroll software to business development choosing the best sales programme, a visibility gap is forming between what exists in the technology estate and what CIOs can measure. This gap is called the disruption gap.
However, the CIO is not the only C-suite member the disruption gap will affect. If not handled correctly, it could prove troublesome for the CFO too. The reasons for this are three-fold:
Digital transformation
Digital transformation is now key for any CFO tasked with ensuring their business is future proof. It is defined as the application of digital technologies to fundamentally change and update all aspects of business and society. The benefits of digital transformation include lower costs and improved accountability with the replacement of physical or analogue processes and interaction with digital equivalents to save time. By empowering business units to identify their own digital needs, organisations will be able to maintain agility and competitive advantage. Crucially for CFOs, this also means the ability to make one thing: profit.
Losing financial control
While the role of the CIO is changing with digital transformation, a key role of the CFO remains the same: to guard against over-spend. However, with IT budgets moving towards individual teams, a gap is forming between the knowledge of how much a budget is and what it is being spent on. Gartner [2] estimates that “by 2019, annual spending on enterprise software licenses will decrease by 30% as a result of software license optimization.”. This is with IT controlling 83 per cent of the spend. Imagine what it will be like when 50 per cent of IT spend rests not with a handful of budget holders, but potentially hundreds.
Lack of visibility
With software spend disseminated throughout an organisation, it will become increasingly difficult for IT teams to establish a clear view over what software is deployed where and how many licenses are needed compared to those held.
This loss of visibility will, in turn, increase the likelihood of unexpected and unbudgeted costs hitting the financial team, either through unplanned technology acquisitions or financial penalties issued by software and infrastructure providers for over-use of applications and cloud resources.
On the flip side, by empowering IT teams to achieve 100% visibility of all IT consumption across all platforms, the finance and IT teams can collaborate to identify significant cost and efficiency savings which can have a tangible impact on the organisation’s bottom line.
Either way, it’s in the CFO’s best interest to find a way to manage the disruption gap now and avoid unnecessary costs later.
Take action today
Bridging the disruption gap has to be a high priority for IT and finance leaders. As leading industry analyst firm Gartner[1] advises: “the focus of the software asset management discipline needs to shift from compliance to cost containment, as reduced customer bargaining power produces escalating prices at SaaS contract renewal.”
To achieve this visibility, IT teams need specialist solutions that provide full visibility of software and hardware assets (both on the network and in the cloud, physical and virtual) and how they are being used. Traditional IT Asset Management and Systems Management tools will not suffice. These teams need access to the latest breed of inventory and optimization technologies designed for organizations heavily invested in Digital Transformation.
[1] Gartner, Metrics and Planning Assumptions Required to Drive Business Unit IT Strategies. Published: 21 April 2016, Kurt Potter, Stewart Buchanan
[2] Gartner, Cut Software Spending Safely With SAM. Published: 16 March 2016 ID: G00301780
Analyst(s): Hank Marquis, Gary Spivak, Victoria Barber
[3] Gartner, Software Asset Management Reaches a Tipping Point: SaaS Cost Management Eclipses License Compliance, 06 January 2017 ID: G00315121, Stephen White | Victoria Barber
