Gender Pay Gap 2023

This is the seventh year that Sharps Bedrooms have published our gender pay gap report and our results show a notable decrease in our pay gap this year. The gender pay gap is the difference in hourly rate of pay between our male and female employees across the whole organisation.

Sharps are fully committed to improving the gender diversity of our business and acknowledge that our pay gap will fluctuate over time as we increase the number of women working at all levels of the organisation.

2023 Gender Pay Gap Report

Sharps Bedrooms is an unusual mix of retail, sales, manufacturing and construction (the installation of our fitted furniture).

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men compared to the average pay of women within an organisation, across all levels of the business. What this means in practice is that if women do more of the less well-paid jobs than men, the gender pay gap is likely to be bigger.

It is important to reiterate that we don’t pay people differently based on their gender. The gender gap is caused by us having a lower proportion of females in senior leadership roles and a higher proportion in our lower paid roles.

This year’s gender numbers show that progress is possible. The mean gender pay gap is at 7.8% which is a significant improvement on the 16.2% in 2022. The national UK average gender pay gap was 7.7% for full time workers but 14.3% for all workers. Sharps median pay gap is 6.7%.

29.8% of men were awarded a bonus and 18% of women.

Whilst Sharps does have a gender pay gap, we believe it is due to lower representation of women in leadership and fewer men in junior roles but, pleasingly, the pay gap has further reduced year on year. To further improve this, a more balanced distribution is needed overall to narrow and eliminate the gap. 

We have a higher proportion of men in senior roles and variable pay opportunity (bonus) is higher at senior levels. In addition, we have many part time employees, the large majority of whom are women. 

Although part-time working exacerbates the bonus gap figures, we will continue to support flexible working as part of our strategy to improve retention and progression.