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 explain why we monitor protected characteristics to measure the effectiveness of all our current and future initiatives
• We will run the Safe to Say campaign and promote locally
• Continue to collaborate 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 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
• 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 inclusive, both in application and development
• Continue to deliver 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
• We will work with colleagues locally and nationally on the development and implementation of plans and policies in support of VAWG (Violence against Women and Girls)

Attraction and recruitment

• Launch the Family Hub (internal resource encompassing pregnancy, IVF treatment, maternity, kit days, shared parental leave and return to work), to help us to attract and recruit females into the Constabulary
• We will promote the fact that we came 25th 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 promote inclusivity during the recruitment process; including exploring ways to make policing in Cheshire a more attractive career choice for females

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 under-represented colleagues

Retention

• The launch 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
• 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, eg. Menopause, Endometriosis
• We will continue to work with our Cheshire Women in Policing Staff Support Network to support females in the workplace
• We will 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
• We will offer exit interviews to identify any trends and learning around women leaving the organisation