Our purpose to secure our members’ future shapes who we are, and our colleagues are fundamental to its success.
We have a strong sense of duty to our members that starts with our colleagues. This means creating an environment where colleagues can do their best work, bring new ideas, different approaches and diverse perspectives. This helps us to attract and keep the passionate people that bring our purpose to life.
Over the past year, we’ve moved closer towards our goal of creating a more diverse and inclusive Railpen. This is through our introduction of a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and action plan and the creation of several community groups, while our updated Benefits, Terms and Conditions have helped us to achieve greater harmonisation and accessibility among colleagues.
Gender pay reporting regulations provide us with the opportunity to share our progress and demonstrate our commitment to treating individuals fairly. We’re not satisfied with rate of progress we’ve made across our median and mean hourly pay gender pay gaps. However, we believe our greatest opportunity to reduce the gender pay gap lies in increasing the number of women in senior roles at Railpen, a challenge shared by our peers in the sector – we are determined to achieve this objective.
We recognise that to make significant strides in this area we need an action plan that includes both targets and changes to processes that mitigate any bias. This action plan will be informed by our detailed gap analysis review.
While not all changes were in place in time for this report (our snapshot date), we’re encouraged by the fact that 55% of our Executive Committee are, at the date of reporting, now women. This follows a reorganisation of the Executive Committee, announced in July 2023, and reinforces the positive impact of the work we’ve previously completed to close the gender gap.
Railpen's gender pay gap
The tables below detail these changes, comparing 2024 with 2023:
A gender imbalance in favour of males continues to exist in the Upper Quartile pay range of the organisation, and this is driving the overall gender pay gap.
We are resolute in working through a range of actions to improve gender balance.
Review of progress in 2024
Railpen’s cultural change programme, ‘The Belonging at Railpen Programme’, continues with a renewed focus on developing and embedding our performance culture alongside continuing to embed the changes we’ve already made.
We’ve seen how the changes we’ve made under this programme have helped to reduce our gender pay gap to date and we are confident this will assist us in continuing to drive further improvements as part of our recent gap analysis and 2025 action plan.
The following paragraphs summarise our progress to date.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
An important part of the Belonging Programme was to create a more inclusive and diverse Railpen. Railpen’s DE&I Committee lead the action plan, which is focused on:
- DE&I policy and strategy
- Data and insights
- Learning and development
- DE&I communications and engagement
- Recruitment
- Processes and policy / DE&I impact assessments
- Culture
We have made the following progress:
DE&I strategy: Railpen developed a DE&I strategy for 2023-2026. It sets out what we mean by DE&I, our aspirations, and our core priorities for the medium term. The Executive Committee and the People and Culture Committee (PCC) have overall responsibility for overseeing strategy implementation. The DE&I Committee works under the leadership of the PCC and contributes to the delivery of the DE&I action plan.
Data and insights: To help us better capture data, we began with an awareness raising exercise: the DE&I Committee continuously campaign on the importance of disability and ethnicity data, encouraging all colleagues across Railpen to consider updating the information that Railpen holds about them. We raised the level of colleagues sharing ethnicity data from 16% to 54% by the end of Quarter 2 in 2024. In addition, the sharing of disability data has risen from 0% of colleagues to 12.6% of colleagues at the end of Quarter 2 in 2024.
DE&I communications and engagement: The DE&I Committee ran campaigns throughout 2023 and 2024 on issues including International Women’s Day, neurodiversity, trans rights, Black History Month and Pride. Many of these topics were led by insight from our colleague survey, to make sure we cover the issues our colleagues care about.
Culture: We established community groups for neurodiversity and menopause in 2023 and subsequently Pride and Women’s community groups in 2024. These provide safe spaces, the sharing of lived experiences, support and networks organically grown by colleagues in Railpen.
We will continue to work towards our strategic goal of creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace. In 2024 we ran specific learning and development programmes, including how to be a responsible bystander – the guiding principle being that we all have a part to play in creating our workplace culture. Additionally, at the time of writing, we’ve started work aimed at helping us to understand how we can increase consistent understanding and awareness of DE&I issues across Railpen.
Values and behaviours
Our values and behaviours are the foundation for building a more equitable workplace.
At Railpen, our commitment to fostering a culture of inclusivity, transparency, and accountability is deeply rooted in our internal values and behaviours. These principles are not just abstract ideals; they are the driving force behind our efforts to achieve equitable outcomes for all colleagues, including addressing the gender pay gap.
Our values and behaviours, launched in October 2023, aim to create a greater sense of connectedness among colleagues. By embedding these values into our daily operations, we ensure that every decision and action aligns with our purpose and collective goals. This alignment is crucial in creating an environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute to their fullest potential. Values and behaviours are the foundation upon which we build a more equitable workplace
Each value has a phrase, a storyline and set of valued behaviours, these are:
Alignment
Challenge the thinking, support the decision
Our passion for our core purpose gives us the permission to speak up to achieve the best outcomes for members. Our decisions align to our purpose, our behaviours align to our collective decisions. Feedback is a gift that takes bravery in giving and courage in receiving. From the foundation of a safe environment, challenge comes without judgement or personal criticism.
Valued behaviours:
- Be brave, give the gift of feedback.
- Be courageous in accepting fair challenge.
- Back the collective decision.
Community
Community first, ego last
We recognise the strength in moving as a collective. We therefore operate on a basis of ‘One Railpen’, succeeding and learning as a team. We expect our people to be active creators of a positive and inclusive culture by understanding and embracing each other’s differences. We invest in each other, collaborating with humility and kindness. When our values are lived, our teammates feel they belong to a community.
Valued behaviours:
- Be kind and stay humble.
- Collaborate with an open and collective mindset.
- Embrace all voices.
Integrity
Integrity leads to safety
Perform with integrity at all times. Doing so creates a safe environment where people are honest, transparent and committed to doing what is best for our members and Railpen. We expect teammates to be accountable and to honour our obligations to regulatory conduct and governance frameworks. Integrity creates psychological safety and nurtures a culture of fair challenge.
Valued behaviours:
- Take accountability and expect the same from others.
- Role model excellent regulatory conduct.
- Be someone we can depend on.
We are aware that fully embedding values across an organisation takes time.
Priorities for HR
In addition to the working groups, the HR team are working with colleagues across Railpen to further develop and embed working practices which we believe will positively impact on our gender pay gap:
- Learning and development.
- The Railpen Living Wage.
- Our approach to talent acquisition.
Learning and development
We continue to develop our ‘Managing the Railpen Way’ training modules for new managers, supporting consistent and fair management of all colleagues and processes; this programme is now mandated.
The Railpen Living Wage
The Railpen Living Wage was introduced from 1 May 2021 and has subsequently increased year on year, ensuring all Railpen colleagues are paid greater than the National Living Wage. Our approach to salary increases during 2024 continued to be heavily influenced by the cost-of-living crisis and our continued ambition to drive down our gender pay gap. The Railpen Living Wage has been embedded into the Reward Framework and will be reviewed and updated accordingly on 1 May annually.
Our approach to talent acquisition
Our Talent Acquisition team plays a pivotal role in attracting and shortlisting diverse candidates for vacancies, both internally and externally. They actively seek opportunities to increase the representation of talent from diverse backgrounds.
DE&I is a priority for our Talent Acquisition team when they are setting selection criteria and processes with hiring managers. The selection processes are designed to be fair, transparent, and efficient, often involving a diverse panel that balances gender, background, and socioeconomic factors. We use gender-neutral language in job adverts and clearly specify the essential, desirable, and behavioural requirements for the role to ensure fairness and clarity.
The talent acquisition learning module, available to managers through the Managing the Railpen Way programme, includes training and support to achieve diverse hiring.
Impact of bonus data on gender pay reporting
In total, 92% of men and 90.1% of women received a bonus at Railpen in April 2024 in respect of the 2023 year. This will fluctuate year on year due to eligibility cut off dates to join the bonus scheme for new entrants.
Railpen pay bonuses in April and, consequently, our hourly pay rate numbers including bonus must, under gender pay gap regulations (The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017)), include pro-rata bonus payments. As a result, it is difficult to make external comparisons on a like-for-like basis, because other companies may pay bonuses at other times of the year, leading to distortions in the calculation of hourly pay.
Actions we're taking (2024/2025)
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to our purpose. Over the past year, we have made significant strides in creating a more inclusive and diverse Railpen through the introduction of a DE&I strategy and action plan, as well as the establishment of several community groups.
We recognise however that we need to do more to reduce the gender pay gap at Railpen, and while we’re encouraged by the positive impact our reorganisation of the Executive Committee has had (since the 2024 snapshot date) on the male to female ratio of Committee members, our upcoming action plan will formalise specific actions we intend to take over the years to come. We will of course celebrate small wins along the way, but we are very much focused on taking consistent and lasting action that will lead to long-term sustainable change.
As a result, we have set up a Gender Pay Gap Working Group with members from Railpen’s Executive Committee, HR and also our DE&I Committee – with plans to expand membership across a range of areas in the business, where gaps can vary. We have already analysed where the gaps are and are focused on publishing a clear action plan that sets out what we will be doing, and when, to more meaningfully close the gender gap at Railpen, while recognising that to achieve lasting change, it may take longer to see the positive impact in some areas.
More reading
For more information on topics mentioned in this gender pay gap report, take a look at our 2023 Stewardship Report.
Our 2023 Gender Pay Report is available on our website.
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