Can you share a little background on Vivid Homes and how you identified the need to change your pay equity strategy?

Vivid was formed about seven and a half years ago, and when we did our first gender pay survey, which would have been in 2018, there was a difference between male and female, and quite a significant difference.

And I suppose our progress to date has been an element of luck, if I'm being honest, but also some real focus on a small number of key things that we think will make a difference.

There's about 300 people who are plumbers, electricians, and that type of thing. And a chunk of them were paid almost on a piecemeal basis. The more jobs you did, the more money you got and so on. Lots of people that are very clever at working out what gave the maximum amount of money. It wasn't a particularly good business model.

We went through a consultation process and looked at everyone's salaries. As a result of that, our gender pay changed by about a five or six percentage point difference. So, whilst our original intent hadn't been to address it for gender pay reasons, actually it made a big difference.

Subsequent to that, we then wanted to make sure we could get as close to zero in terms of a gender pay gap as we could.

For every role, when there was a person who had a manager or supervisory responsibility, we made sure that on the interview panel there's a male and female, even if the female didn't come from that particular area. Very important. That drove a recognition about some differences that were needed. We're very clear around our advertising, trying to change some of our advertising to make sure we can attract the right people. We're quite good at some of our social media around emphasising the sort of organisation we wanted to be, our aspirations and so forth.

We also talked to local schools and colleges trying to get apprenticeships into those areas, particularly focused around women. One of the things we did, which was quite good, was getting female apprentices into the trades area. We have a small number now who started as apprentice electricians and apprentice plumbers. So again, we were very focused around that.

And then when we recruited more senior roles, if we went to an agency, a key part of what we asked for was to ensure that their short lists and their long lists had a good, diverse range of candidates. If that didn't happen, we say you haven't given us the right list, go back again, and try again. So, forcing them to really work hard on attracting candidates. All those things, I think, helped us move that gap down really.

We just focus on that each year, doing more and more. We tweak, we make changes. And two years ago, we got to our point where it was a zero pay difference.

We also made sure, in terms of our internal training, that we had training that was applicable all around. So, it wasn’t just male oriented if that makes sense.

I guess if you're talking about trades and things like plumbing, there's probably a lower percentage of women involved in those in those sorts of roles?

That's right, there's much less, and it is overwhelmingly male, and still is within our organisation. But you know, you can do something. Some of the supervisors we move from different parts of the business. You don't necessarily have to be an expert in plumbing or brick work to be a supervisor." Cut the other sentences they don't make sense.

What were the obstacles to just having that pay equality in place, in the first place? Just pay everyone the same, right? Is that too simplistic?

One of the things we have to explain to people is that equal pay is different to gender pay, if that makes sense. In all our roles, if you're male or female, you absolutely get paid the same. There is no difference.

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It’s more about, are we giving women the opportunities to progress through the organisation and are we giving them the opportunities to enter parts of the organisation that are traditionally more male oriented, and begin to break down some of those barriers?

We did have a bit of a glass ceiling. We had an all-male executive [team] when I first started, we now don't have an all-male executive [team]. We worked quite hard at bringing people in who could challenge some of that thinking. And we now have a woman on the executive. We also looked at our board. We have a non-executive board, and when I joined, the split was about 80% male to 20% women. It's now 50-50, so again, we've challenged ourselves to try and make sure it's the case at board level as well.

All the way through the organisation, we've looked at what actions we can take to address it when we have particular issues and challenges.

On the board issue, we spoke to agencies, and said you need to make sure you bring us a list of candidates who are not just male, got a breadth of experience, different ethnic groups, and so forth.

And do you talk in terms of percentages?

Our workforce is at 45% women, 55% men. I think women make up slightly more than half of the population of the country, but of the working population, it's about 45% so we're about where the working population is. But we still have pockets, as I've talked about, in our trades, where they're predominantly male, but that also means we've got pockets where it's predominantly women.

So again, we're trying to make sure we get a better balance across the organisation in roles which might traditionally have been seen as more female roles, making sure we've given opportunities to men. And there is the work we're doing in trades to continue to challenge ourselves to create more opportunities for women in that area.