Gender and ethnic pay gaps

26 April 2023

We care about closing pay gaps, particularly closing gender, Māori, Pacific and other ethnic groups’ gaps and growing the diversity of the workforce in the public service. Because of this, we are committed to implementing Kia Toipoto — the Public Service Gender, Māori, pacific and Ethnic Pay Gaps Action Plan 2021-2024.

As a small agency with a total of 16 staff, we do not meet the threshold to produce meaningful gender or ethnic pay gap statistics as per the StatsNZ guidance.

Measuring the diversity of our people at a detailed level over time is not meaningful, as small changes in our workforce can significantly impact our demographics. Because of this, our plan focuses on introducing and improving our policies — removing bias and increasing diversity, inclusion and transparency.

These improvements include ensuring all our HR and remuneration processes are free from bias, and broadening our approach to recruitment. We will use information from our workforce profile, people data and recruitment statistics and feedback from staff to indicate our progress. Looking at our information, we can see:

• We have equal numbers of women and men on our staff.
• All our staff are permanent and work full-time.
• We have 12 regional field advisors who are contractors and, therefore, not covered by this plan. The regional field advisors are an important part of the organisation and, though they are not employees, we recognise that they should be included in discussions and plans to reduce gender and ethnic pay gaps.
• One staff member identifies as Māori and one as Pacific Islander. Two identify as Asian.
• Six out of seven of our managers identify as male, and six out of seven also identify as European/Pākehā.
• Most of the people in the lower half of our pay range are women.

This year, we are focussing on:

• Reviewing our HR policies, including recruitment and remuneration
• Reviewing and introducing integrated salary ranges and bands
• Introducing a goal for our leadership team to be more diverse
• Develop a range of support network options for staff, with support from Te Kawa Mataaho
• Professional development and capacity building for managers to support them in implementing Kia Toipoto goals

Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa gender and ethnicity pay gap action plan, April 2023