Acas gender pay gap report 2025

On 31 March 2025, the figures show:

• 60% of our workforce are women – this is the same as in 2024 and a 1 percentage point increase from 59% in 2023 and 2022
• 43% of our senior civil servants are women – this is a decrease of 14.3% from 2024

The total number of staff was 1,075 in 2024 to 2025, and 1,101 in 2023 to 2024.

The total number of senior civil servants was 7 in 2025, 2024 and 2023.

When calculating the gender pay gap, we compare the average hourly pay for women and men in the organisation.

On 31 March 2025, the figures show:

• our mean (average) hourly pay gap is 3.6%
• our median hourly pay gap is 0.5%

However, without the senior civil service bands the mean hourly pay gap is 2.4%. The median pay gap remained the same.

In the financial year 2024 to 2025, there has been a small increase in the mean pay gap from 3.5% to 3.6% but a small improvement in medium figures from 0.7%, down to 0.5%.

The mean hourly pay gap has increased slightly. This is mainly attributable to a change in our higher earning grades, particularly senior civil servants, resulting in a higher proportion of men compared with women. There also continues to be a higher proportion of men working in London based roles than women who earn a higher salary due to London allowances.

In 2024 to 2025, the figures show:

• 88.8% of women were awarded a bonus
• 88.4% of men were awarded a bonus
• the mean bonus pay gap is -0.3%
• the median bonus pay gap is -16.7%

The median difference suggests that men are receiving lower instant awards on average. But some men receive higher awards than women, resulting in the mean difference being less in favour of women.

The table below shows the proportion of women and men in each pay quartile for Acas. As our overall workforce is 60% women, we expect each quartile to have about 60% representation of women.

It shows that there is a slightly higher proportion of women in the lower quartiles and under-representation in the highest quartile.

Acas senior leadership team are committed to fair pay irrespective of gender.

We will continue to build on actions and initiatives aimed at eradicating the gender pay gap, including:

• adopting a 'flexibility by default' principle by moving to a hybrid working model, allowing many colleagues to work from home or other suitable locations more frequently in the future
• support for women returning to work through shared parental leave, job sharing, compressed hours, part-time, remote working (including working from home) and term-time only opportunities – plus, encouraging men to also take advantage of flexible working arrangements
• continuing to monitor pay to identify pay differences and take targeted action where appropriate, within Civil Service pay controls
• taking a more proactive approach towards monitoring our bonus pay in the future – this includes reviewing our recognition programme and making sure full Management Information (MI) data is collected to ensure fairness of recognition awards across all grades and gender
• continuing our approach to anonymise the job application process to reduce the potential for bias
• making sure that all interview panel members have undergone recruitment training which includes ensuring diversity and success profiles
• aiming to have a 'diverse by default' approach towards recruitment – for example, by having recruitment panels which are diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity
• encouraging line managers to have an open ongoing conversation with staff on career development and progression, to help women progress in their careers

Mean (average) gender pay gap

• The mean hourly rate is the average hourly wage across the entire organisation.
• The mean gender pay gap measures the difference between the women's mean hourly wage and the men's mean hourly wage.

Median gender pay gap

• The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle.
• The median gender pay gap is the difference between the women's median hourly wage (the middle paid woman) and the men's median hourly wage (the middle paid man)