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

• We will develop the way in which we share our workforce data, so that it is transparent to both our workforce, and the communities of Cheshire.
• We will continue to monitor protected characteristics to measure the effectiveness of all our current and future initiatives.
• Identify conflicts in policy and process in collaboration with our external Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) Board (volunteers from the Cheshire community), 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 are minimised.
• Check and challenge our own policies to ensure that they support and encourage staff in line with the DEI strategy and Gender Pay Gap report actions.

Policies

• We will develop focus groups 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.
• We will 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 free from conscious and unconscious bias, both in application and development.
• We will introduce 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.

Attraction and recruitment

• The work we plan to take around making pregnancy, IVF treatment, maternity, kit days, shared parental leave and return to work, will help us to attract and recruit females into the Constabulary.
• We will promote the fact that we came 12th in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers Awards, as a way to show potential applicants how inclusive we are, and attract females to our organisation.
• We will continue to explore ways to eliminate bias in recruitment including during the recruitment process; including exploring ways to make policing in Cheshire a more attractive career choice for females.
• We will use the Police Uplift Programme as a way to really push our female officer intake.
• We will continue to enable and encourage females into officer roles by offering positive action support through our Insight programme.

Promotion

• We will 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.
• We will 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.
• We will actively promote and encourage performance and talent discussions to take place and will dip sample this for our female and underrepresented colleagues.

Retention

• The work we plan to take around making pregnancy, IVF treatment, maternity, kit days, shared parental leave and return to work, will help us to retain essential knowledge, skills and experience.
• We will 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, e.g. Menopause and endometriosis.
• We will examine exit interviews for female colleagues for any learning.
• We will continue to work with our Cheshire Women in Policing Staff Support Network to identify problems and resolve them as quickly as possible.
• We will continue to support the promotion of International Women’s Day.
• We will introduce a 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.