UK Pay Report

Welcome to our UK Pay Report for 2023.

At Gowling WLG we firmly believe that diversity and inclusion makes us a stronger business – more relevant and valuable to our clients, more empowering for our people, and more engaged with our wider communities.

We celebrate different cultures, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences and support the UK government's focus on pay gap transparency to highlight areas of potential unfairness. Since 2018 our reporting has gone beyond statutory requirements, setting out our ethnicity pay gap, sexual orientation pay gap position and including our Partner population.

The pay gaps identified in this report are a direct result of the structure of our workforce across a broad range of roles and two distinct pay markets in the UK (London and Birmingham). Trends in the legal market during the reporting period have amplified this structural 'skew' in our reported gender pay gap, with higher market-driven salary increases for our Lawyers as against our non-Lawyer roles (which proportionately comprise more female employees).

We remain fully committed to a workplace in which everyone is supported to develop and progress to the best of their abilities, not only in the UK but across all of our offices globally, and to achieve their full career (and pay) potential. That's in part why we undertake an independent engagement survey and audit of our HR practices resulting in our accreditation as a Great Place to Work, an accreditation we've achieved for each of the past 24 years.

Importantly, we are confident that our robust annual assurance processes ensure we offer equal pay for equal roles and performance. We are also proud to be an accredited "living wage employer" in the UK, going beyond our statutory obligations and paying at least the "real living wage" to all our employees, including apprentices.

We are pleased to share in this report a snapshot of our recent activities and investments to bring this to life - and promote fairness, inclusion and equality across all parts of our organisation.

I confirm that the data reported is accurate.

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