Closing the gender pay gap

Cheshire Constabulary is required by law to carry out gender pay reporting under the Equality Act 2010. Read our latest Gender Pay Gap Report.

Actions to reduce the gender pay gap:

Transparency

• Explain why we monitor protected characteristics to measure the effectiveness of all our current and future initiatives
• Run the Safe to Say campaign and promote locally
• Continue to collaborate with our Inclusion Allies, Staff Support Networks, Staff Associations and Unison to ensure that barriers for females wishing to join or who are employed by the Constabulary are identified and minimised

Policies

• Engage with our networks and allies to better understand the problems that people face whilst being pregnant, taking maternity leave, working Keep in Touch (KIT) days, having IVF treatment, taking shared parental leave and returning to work during their working life. We will work as a collaborative team to create a smoother process
• Ensure that equality impact assessments are carried out on all family friendly policies (those that help to balance and benefit our work/family life) to ensure they are inclusive, both in application and development
• Set a force training priority for mandatory training for all staff and officers around diversity, equality and inclusion, to ensure our inclusive culture is developed and maintained throughout our colleagues’ careers
• Support the development of policies and conditions around VAWG and actively promote

Attraction and recruitment

• Promote the Constabulary as an Inclusive Top 50 UK Employer, to show potential applicants how inclusive we are, and attract females to our organisation
• Continue to explore ways to promote inclusivity, including during the recruitment process; including exploring ways to make policing in Cheshire a more attractive career choice for females, work with CWIP to review
• Continue to enable and encourage females into officer roles by offering positive action support through our familiarisation events

Promotion

• Extend our coaching and mentoring programmes throughout the organisation, across all roles and ranks to assist with career plans with a focus on developing skill sets and building experience
• Continue to enable and encourage our under-represented colleagues to develop skills through the Aspire programme, so they can be more confident in their current role, or they can confidently pursue lateral moves or promotion aspirations. We will always offer this support to females who do not succeed in their application for a promotion
• Actively promote and encourage performance and talent discussions to take place and will dip sample this for our female and under-represented colleagues 

Retention

• Refresh of our Family Hub will enable the process of pregnancy, IVF treatment, maternity, kit days, shared parental leave and return to work to be more effective and will help us to retain essential knowledge, skills and experience
• Extend our training offer to include training specifically around the health of those who identify as women and information around women only health conditions for the entire force, eg. Menopause, Endometriosis
• Continue to work with our Cheshire Women in Policing Staff Support Network to support female in the workplace, via individual network strand leads, such as Menopause, Pregnancy and Endometriosis
• Promote the personal support passport for carers (58% of carers are women) to understand what they need, in order to give their best performance whilst at work
• Offer stay interviews to identify any trends and learning around women leaving the organisation and involve representatives from CWIP to review
• A programme of work is being implemented to provide a spotlight on Sergeants by increasing Sergeant capacity, focus on those from under-represented groups will form a part of this work helping to identify and spot trends