2023 Tata Consultancy Services UK Gender Pay Gap Report
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TCS UK’s mean gender pay gap for 2023 has decreased to 16.42% from 17.96% in 2022, which is a 150-basis points improvement over last year and the gap has been reducing over the past few years. The shift is on account of increased hiring of women employees. This is our continuous commitment towards improving gender balance within the organisation. TCS has also seen median gender pay gap decrease to 15.17% from 16.56% in 2022, which is a 140-basis points improvement.
At TCS we are continuing to focus on diverse hiring, which has resulted in 6% increase in women in the workforce, and our women employees now constitute 36% of our total workforce in the UK and Ireland.
In 2023, we have seen women’s percentage in top quartile go up by 2%,, which is due to women’s headcount increasing across all levels.
89.7% of women at TCS UK received bonus in 2023, which has increased by 1.7% from 2022.The percentage of men who received bonus in 2023 has also increased by 1.8% from 2022. This is due to the fact that we have hired more women at junior/middle levels, the bonus potential is also reflecting the seniority level they are at, which has influenced the mentioned gap. As these women progress within their careers, we will be seeing the gap decreasing.
TCS UK launched the UK Calling programme in 2022, which was successfully able to invite women leaders from other geographies to work in the UK, this programme has helped increase the percentage of women in leadership roles in the UK.
TCS has won at Women in IT Awards in February 2023, at Outstanding Employee Network of the Year Category with the initiative Employee Network of Networks.
TCS fully recognises that diversity and inclusion in the workplace has become more critical than ever before as a fundamental need to remain competitive, relevant and support business success.
As part of our commitment to becoming a fully gender-diverse and inclusive global organisation, TCS has invested significantly over the past few years to research and update a series of comprehensive, long-term programmes that will facilitate real change in thinking, behaviours, actions and the ways we communicate. TCS has been operating in the UK for more than 45 years and currently employs more than 21,000 people — making it one of the country’s largest digital employers. We have more than 200 customers, including some of Britain’s best-loved brands, and we are committed to attracting diverse talent into the digital sector more broadly, and our own business. TCS recently won an award in the Inclusion & Diversity category at the Scottish HR Network Awards, as well as being shortlisted in the Talent Development and Corporate Social Responsibility categories.
Our global workforce continues to be very diverse, comprising 155 nationalities, with women making up 36% of the 600,000+ total workforce. We are working to continue to build a diverse talent pipeline that allows us to recruit and retain more women into TCS and the broader digital industry, as well as support more women to move into senior leadership roles.
In the UK, we have an ongoing and ambitious plan to transform the profile of our workforce. It includes:
This plan is helping TCS both address the gender pay gap and continue to build an inclusive and rewarding workplace for all our employees.
TCS recognises that a diverse and inclusive workforce is necessary to drive innovation, foster creativity, and guide business strategies. TCS focus has been to enable better representation of women through sustained interventions at every level. This stems from the verity that requirements of women associate differ at every life stage. Customized offerings are curated in-house to offer support to every woman associate at each juncture of the employee life cycle.
This includes maintaining clear and current succession plans, having leadership programmes catering to this set of TCS diverse population, and providing global skills and experiences in leadership programme. Providing women with access to career development programmes, creating and showcasing and ongoing positive feedback though mentoring, and coaching propels them further toward leadership.
In the UK, we have an ongoing and ambitions plan to transform the profile of our workforce. All gender initiatives are based on the five strategy pillars of Culture & Diversity namely Ecosystem, Enablement, Engagement, Development and Representation where:
a) Representation focuses on hiring persons from under-represented diversity identity segments.
b) Enablement focuses on policy and infrastructure.
c) Eco-system focuses on building a culture of inclusion through awareness and sensitization initiatives.
d) Engagement focuses on building employee resource groups for community connects.
e) Development focuses on skill and capability building for the community.
This plan is helping TCS both address the gender pay gap and continue to build an inclusive and rewarding workplace for all our employees.
This is the seventh year that we have published the gender pay gap information for our UK business, based on the data collected in April 2023. A report from the Office of National Statistics in November 2023 indicated that the overall gender pay gap in the UK is 14.8%. TCS figures show that the average (‘mean’) pay of our female employees in the UK is 16.42% lower than our male employees. This is down from a gap of 17.96% in 2022, which shows a gradual year-on-year decrease.
The shortage of women engineers is historically an issue for businesses throughout the digital and information technology industry, and one of the prime reasons why we still have gender pay gap — although it is narrowing, especially in the junior levels as we have seen an increase of more women hired year on year due to increased pool of talent available.
We have also seen 89.7% of women at TCS UK received bonus in 2023, which has increased by 1.7% from 2022.The percentage of men who received bonus in 2023 has also increased by 1.8% from 2022. Which is due to the fact that we have hired more women at junior/middle levels, the bonus potential is also reflecting the seniority level they are at, which has influenced the mentioned gap. As these women progress within their careers, we will be seeing the gap decreasing.
Figure 1 shows our pay quartiles and the impact this has on the pay gap data.
Top quartile |
89% men |
11% women |
Upper middle quartile |
83% men |
17% women |
Lower middle quartile |
78% men |
22% women |
Lower quartile |
71% men |
29% women |
Figure 1: Pay quartiles at TCS UK
We have seen a positive shift wherein 2% of women staff moved from lower quartile to lower middle and 3% from Moved middle to Upper middle quartile. We have also seen a 2 % increase in women in Top quartiles. This reaffirms TCSs commitment towards developing skills for its women staff and giving them right career opportunity to excel towards leadership roles.
Despite continuous efforts towards hiring and retaining women, we know there is much more to be done.
Our work to address the gender pay gap falls into five main areas:
Representation focuses on hiring persons from under-represented diversity identity segments.
Enablement focuses on policy and infrastructure.
Eco-system focuses on building a culture of inclusion through awareness and sensitization initiatives.
Engagement focuses on building employee resource groups for community connects.
Development focuses on skill and capability building for the community.
Representation
At TCS we are continuing to focus on diverse hiring, which has resulted in 6% increase in Women workforce, and our Women employee now contributes to 36% of total workforce in the UK&I:
We continue to ensure that the language we use in role descriptions, our imagery and how generally we project TCS externally is positive, inclusive and welcoming.
Using gender-neutral role descriptions to ensure we eliminate bias.
An incentivisation scheme has been introduced with our external recruitment agencies to ensure we have gender-diverse applications.
Internships, work experience placements and mentoring for students continue to bring dividends in encouraging women to TCS.
Ensured our preferred supplier list (PSL) contracts are reviewed and updated with accessibility and reasonable adjustments clauses.
We are part of external forums to network and encourage more women to apply for roles at TCS.
Enablement
TCS is continuing the work on our internal policies and infrastructure to ensure that we further support women within the organisation by focusing on menopause awareness and support system, further working on family-friendly programme, creating an environment of support for workplace parents and more. TCS offers diversity-friendly policies catering to the life cycle changes and better work-life integration. TCS has made significant investments in collaborative tools and workspaces to enable flexibility and work-life integration.
Ecosystem
TCS aims to ensure continuous journey of inclusive behaviours of our employees to create the environment where everyone can thrive. On regular basis we provide sensitisation sessions, organise thought-provoking panel discussions as well as ensure the right interventions are made to create inclusion without exception. In FY23 we trained around 5000 employees in DE&I subjects and we continue doing that on yearly basis.
Engagement
Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s) provide a safe space for communities to meet, ideate, solution and share experiences, learnings, and concerns. It provides a platform for diverse ideas, thoughts, and perspectives to merge creating an opportunity for meaningful dialogue. These ERGs are platforms for building sustainable human and social capital within the organization. Core Committees have been set up by community members to oversee the planning and execution of strategies which speak to building engagement and agency within the community.
TCS NOW—Women in Networks: Networks encouraging women to take make their careers in highly specialised roles such as technology, sales, banking, insurance, and consulting.
The Hive—Gender Diversity Employee Resource Group that aims to contribute towards creating gender equality within the organisation while combining efforts across genders.
Development
• In FY23, we launched the UK Calling career development programme, which aims to provide an opportunity for women who work at TCS in other geographies to join us in the UK for leadership roles.
• The Elevate Wings Programme, which enables employees to fast-rack their careers through the combination of training programmes and mentoring.
• To further support our employees, in FY23 we launched menopause support plan, which started with Menopause Awareness sessions for our employees as well as creating the sub-employee network “Menopause Café” which creates a safe space for employees to connect and share menopause related topics.
• We continue to support and nurture women employees globally; inspire women to progress their careers; and provide a safe space for women to communicate with each other through other initiatives, such as: The iExcel Executive Education programme for women to match our executive leaders with diverse women talent for top-down inclusion.
• We also aim to consistently promote and enhance women leadership across the globe, through initiatives such as She Says, which provides a platform where women leaders in TCS can share their experiences to a global audience via monthly webinars to inspire both men and women through the challenges of their life stories.