UK Gender Pay Gap

Vodafone's ambition is to be the world's best employer for women. From our groundbreaking global parental leave policy to our ReConnect programme, we are committed to becoming a company with a strong track record of attracting, retaining and developing talented women. You can read more about what we're doing to reduce the gender pay gap on this webpage.

Equal pay is about ensuring women and men are paid the same amount for the same job, while the gender pay gap compares the average pay of all male and female colleagues, in line with the UK regulatory methodology. At Vodafone, we pay our men and women equally, but like most companies, we have a gender pay gap.

Vodafone has a gender pay gap because there are currently more men than women in senior and specialist, and therefore higher paid, positions. This makes average male pay higher than average female pay, resulting in a gender pay gap.

We calculate the median and mean average hourly rate for men and for women. This is for UK employees only and in line with the UK regulatory methodology. The difference between these figures is our UK gender pay gap.

We calculate the median and mean average bonus pay for men and women working in our UK operations, as per the regulatory methodology. The difference between these figures is the bonus pay gap.

'Mean' and 'median' are two different calculations. To calculate the mean, the values (e.g. hourly pay or bonus pay) are added together and divided by the number of employees. The median is the number in the middle of all values, when arranged from lowest to highest.

Employee hourly pay is ranked from lowest to highest, and divided into four quartiles, each with an equal number of employees. We then look at the proportion of males and females within each quartile, to understand the gender distribution at each of the four pay levels.

The gender pay gap will fluctuate year on year, influenced by changes in our business structure and the percentage of men and women at all levels and positions. Notwithstanding this, it is of course our ambition to reduce our gender pay gap over time. You can find more information on how we intend to do this in the ‘global programmes’ section of this webpage.

Vodafone’s Total Reward Structure is underpinned by our Fair Pay Principles, which apply to all employees regardless of level, location or role.  One of our Fair Pay Principles is “Free From Discrimination” – that our pay should not be affected by gender, age, disability, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, cultural background or belief.  We annually review the average position of our males and females against their market benchmark, grade and function to identify and understand any differences.

Our reward framework is designed to promote consistency and transparency and reduce the opportunity and impact of any unconscious bias, through: