Exclusive: UK's top resellers still paying female staff a fifth less

Resellers and MSPs are struggling to make headway on the structural imbalances within their workforces, latest annual pay data suggests

The average hourly pay of female staff at the UK's top resellers remains over 20 per cent below their male counterparts, analysis of the latest pay gap data by CRN reveals.

Taken collectively, data logged by 22 firms in our sector by last month's deadline shows no discernible improvement on the previous two years.

This year the government relaxed obligatory reporting rules to give eligible firms (ie those with over 250 staff) more "breathing space" during the pandemic.

Around half of the eligible resellers and MSPs we track still reported their numbers by the 5 April deadline, however, and a full breakdown of their gender pay gaps can be found in this report available exclusively to CRN Essential subscribers.

Those that took the time to file pay gap reports admitted they were struggling to tackle the structural imbalances within their companies that sees male workers dominating higher-paid sales, technical and top management roles.

Putting a positive spin on the data, the median pay gap (ie, how much less per hour the middle-paid female worker is paid than her male counterpart) among these 22 firms improved from 20.5 to 20.1 per cent year on year.

But the mean pay gap - which is just as valid a measure in many people's eyes - actually widened from 21.2 to 23.3 per cent.

Zooming out further to look all three years of annual data, there is no discernible trend, with the mean and median jumping around but going neither up nor down consistently (see below).

Structural imbalance

Gender pay differs from equal pay, which looks at salaries for roles the same or similar responsibilities. Gender pay is a much broader measure, which looks at the difference between the average earnings of men and women across the organisation, regardless of the roles they undertake.

And here, the channel faces a huge - if not insurmountable - structural obstacle.

As the resellers and MSPs we track were at pains to point out, men tend to dominate the higher paid top leadership, commissionable sales and highly skilled technical roles within their businesses.

Using data on the percentage of women that sit in each pay quartile, CRN was also able to record what percentage of the workforce women account for in each of the 22 firms.

In an encouraging development, women made up - on average - 26.9 per cent of the workforce - a small improvement on the 26.6 per cent average recorded a year earlier and the 26.2 per cent average logged a year before that (see below for the gender balance of individual resellers).

Channel firms do appear to be showing some progress on attracting and retaining more female staff, but - paradoxically - some claim their efforts to tackle gender diversity are having a short-term negative impact on their pay gaps.

CRN Essential subscribers can see a full breakdown and analysis of the industry's gender pay challenge here.