Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap

The lower quartile includes entry level jobs in estate cleaning and horticulture and administration whilst the upper quartile includes the higher paid executive teams, senior management and specialist roles. It’s important to note that Poplar HARCA pays men and women the same salary for doing similar jobs. The gap which exists is because we still have more men employed in the upper and lower quartiles.

We continue to offer development opportunities to all our staff. In 2025/26 we will be improving our learning and development offer by ensuring that all staff are presented with tailored growth opportunities as part of the rollout of our new People Performance and Development Policy and associated processes. Improving Poplar HARCA’s development offer to staff is a central focus of our strategy, alongside cultural inclusion and engagement. This year we also plan to launch a reciprocal mentoring programme which will see members of our Staff Executive (non-managerial staff from across the business) paired with Corporate Management Team Directors. This will provide additional learning opportunities for everyone involved.

Our mean gender pay gap (the difference between the hourly average earnings for men and women) has increased slightly this year, from 8% to just under 10%. Despite this, our investment in EDI initiatives (which includes bespoke training at induction) continues to have a positive effect. In our most recent deep-dive staff survey we scored -2 for average EDI disparity. This is a very positive outcome indicating that there were no significant variations in how staff from historically underrepresented groups responded when compared with Global Majority staff. And our hourly median pay-rate stands at -0.04%, which means that the hourly earnings midpoint for women employees at HARCA is slightly higher than it is for men.

Poplar HARCA has a bonus gender pay gap of 39% this year. This bonus pay gap exists because, whilst all non-executive level employees are eligible to receive the same flat bonus, it is reduced pro rata for those who commence employment part way through the year and/or who work part time. And the majority of our part time employees are women. In addition, whilst all Executive Team members are eligible to receive the same performance related bonus, it should be noted that there are fewer women in this group.