The Global Energy Challenge

Tokamak Energy publishes its first Gender Pay Gap report

Tokamak Energy has today published its first Gender Pay Gap report. This is an important milestone in the growth of the organisation and part of the company’s continuing commitment to openness and transparency.

The Gender Pay Gap report is a ‘snapshot’ of data taken each year to compare the hourly pay and bonus figures for men and women across all roles and grades. All organisations with more than 250 employees must report this data.

Today’s report is compiled using data from 5 April 2023, capturing paid gross salaries and bonus awards 12 months prior to this date. This was in the middle of a period of significant growth for the company and before an organisational design review and restructuring had been completed. It is also important to clarify that a gender pay gap is not a measure of equal pay, which compares the salary of individuals performing the same role.

The headline figures from the company’s 2023 report published on GOV.UK here show:

  • Women’s mean (average value) hourly rate is 16.6% less than men
  • Women’s median (middle value) hourly rate is 16.2% less than men

The report shows that nearly all the difference in 2023 is from the upper quartile of earners. It should also be noted that a very small number of bonuses were paid to men only (2.36%) in 2023. The encouraging news is if the company was to run the same report today those figures would reduce to an 8.95% difference in mean hourly rate and 3.43% in the median hourly rate.

Understanding this data and taking action to fairly address any gap is extremely important to the company.  It is a positive step forward to see the changes that were introduced in the past 12 months, including a number of promotions for women across the company in recognition of the great work they are doing, that will be reflected in next year’s report.

A new pay and grading framework introduced using external benchmarking salary data is rightly supporting equity in pay for aligned skills and experience and scope of roles, in addition to clearer career progression for all of the company’s people, both on technical and managerial paths.

A 2024 company-wide bonus award saw a higher number of females receiving ‘Very Good’ awards and there has been more focus and success on targeting diverse candidate pools for new roles. This investment in people, and in building a diverse workforce, is essential to achieving the company’s mission of clean, secure, affordable fusion energy for all.

Tokamak Energy is  fully committed to continue to engage with its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion working group.  New ideas will constantly be developed on ways to further improve representation across the company as well as continuing to challenge thinking internally and across the fusion industry. This includes assessing and improving how future employees are attracted and recruited as well as more outreach and STEM events to build talent pipelines for the future.

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