Today we are sharing our annual Gender Pay Gap report. Our results are based on the snapshot date of 5 April 2021. They show published data for the two legal entities where we have more than 250 employees – Tetra Tech Limited and Tetra Tech Environment Planning Transport Limited. For full visibility we have also shared combined figures for all legal entities that sit under Tetra Tech Group Limited in the UK.
What is being reported and how is it calculated?
Gender Pay is not the same as Equal Pay. Equal pay is legally required and makes sure that both genders receive the same pay for doing the same (or equivalent) job.
Gender Pay is the comparison of the average hourly pay of men and the average hourly pay of women irrespective of the job they do, expressed as a percentage. We are required to share both a Median and Mean calculation.
MEDIAN: This is calculated by lining up the remuneration of male and female employees from highest to lowest. The median compares the female and the male in the middle of their lines.
MEAN: This is the average of the whole sample for both men and women and therefore can be affected by extreme values at either end of the pay distribution
What do 2021’s figures show?
Both our engineering and environment planning transport businesses show improvement in both the mean and median gender pay gap. Across all Tetra Tech companies generally, the gap remains similar to our 2020 report and has actually slightly increased.
There has also been an increase in the number of females at some levels of our business most notably the top quartile of both our engineering and environment planning transport businesses and the 3rd quartile of our business overall.
There is often a pattern throughout the built environment industry, especially in STEM-focused careers of there being an imbalance of males and female employees at these senior levels. This naturally contributes to the gender pay gap. These results show some movement in the right direction as we have attracted a number of senior female technical employees to Tetra Tech as well as promoting from within. Like many of our peers however, we continue to see this imbalance and it is an area we will continue to focus on improving.
We cannot dismiss improvements have not been seen across all areas and whilst we are pleased with the positive change we have seen in certain areas, we are determined to understand what more we can glean from the data, the impact our more recent initiatives will have and what more we can do to improve our gender pay gap throughout the whole business.
Our Commitment
The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda across the wider Tetra Tech group is part of our organisation’s DNA. Ensuring we act in accordance with our DEI values falls to every member of staff from recruitment activity to industry event attendance.
To support our employees in this we have undertaken several activities over the past year. These include:
- A further investment in unconscious bias training
- Issuing diversity in recruitment guidance and having a focus on our employee value proposition to help hiring managers attract a diverse pool of candidates for roles
- Committing to a truly agile and flexible working model above and beyond what many of our peers have retained since lockdown restrictions eased. This means colleagues can “work where they want, when they want” with the only caveats being that our clients’ and our team development needs are met.
- Relaunching our employee led DEI groups including one focussed on gender equality
Our efforts continue too with further actions underway including
- Reviewing our family policies to ensure they are fully inclusive and, as a business we are as supportive as we can be to parents and carers across a range of circumstances.
- Embarking on a second cohort of mentoring to help candidates broaden their skills and knowledge
Craig Hatch, President, Tetra Tech UK, commented on our commitment to DEI
‘If we are going to attract the best talent to our business it is important that we have diversity across our senior role models. Tetra Tech President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Dr Leslie L. Shoemaker is a great example and champion of this having recently been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. We have female leads for many of our key projects here in the UK too and I hope that by demonstrating their successes we will be able to inspire future generations of female leaders to seek out a career at Tetra Tech.”
There is no simple fix to the gender pay gap, the road to improvement requires constant attention and creation of an environment where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. That is why it will remain clearly in our focus into next year and beyond.
Our reported data can also be found on the UK Government’s website below:
Tetra Tech Ltd: gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/Employer/MNZzKt7F/2021
Tetra Tech Environment Planning & Transport: gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/Employer/jNKctsuG/2021
Rich Roberts, Group HR Director
