Formats and related files
Executive summary#
As we work towards lifting living standards and improving intergenerational wellbeing for New Zealanders, Te Tai Ōhanga The Treasury also has a role to play as an employer. The Treasury can positively affect the lifetime earnings of its female and ethnic employees in a global environment where pay gaps still exist for women and non-European ethnic groups.
The Treasury has made significant progress with closing the gender pay gap, with the pay gap more than halving since 2016 and ensuring that pay gaps are not present in same or similar roles. As with most public service agencies, the Treasury still has a gender pay gap. As at 30 September 2022 - the date at which the data throughout this report is current - the Treasury's mean gender pay gap is 10.8%, and the median gender pay gap is 8.8% (largely influenced by grade distribution). While these gaps have been generally trending downwards and decreasing over time, this year has seen a slight increase in the gender pay gap of 1.1% since last year's action plan (in which our mean was 9.7%, and our median 7.7% as at 30 September 2021).
Our overall ethnic pay gap currently sits at a mean of 18.6%. This is largely influenced by grade distribution, given that 63% of non-European employees sit below grade 18 (compared with 37% of European employees).
The Treasury acknowledges addressing our gender and ethnic pay gaps as a priority, and we are working to understand and address the drivers that contribute to these gaps. Many of our drivers are similar to those experienced elsewhere in the public service, in the wider New Zealand labour market, and in comparable jurisdictions overseas.
Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission (2022) suggests that, “The gender pay gap [and] ethnic pay gaps can relate to occupational segregation or the occupation profile of a particular ethnic group. Māori, Pacific and Asian [and female] public servants are over-represented in lower-paid occupation groups.” We refer to this concept as “occupational grouping”, and our analysis of our employee data is telling us that this is most likely the strongest driver of our pay gaps at Te Tai Ōhanga.
It is important to acknowledge that some employee data sets are not large enough for robust analysis, so similar data has been aggregated (where it makes sense to do so) and general observations have been noted.
In summary#
In our analysis of employee data as at 30 September 2022, we found in summary that:
- Our senior leadership teams and many of our occupational groups/directorates are gender balanced.
- Women are currently under-represented in some occupational groups/directorates, such as some policy areas and in the Information and Technology group, as well as in principal advisor roles. Women are over-represented in the business support and People and Wellbeing groups.
- This year has seen a slight increase in the gender pay gap of 1.1% since last year's action plan (report). While we have been making good progress, this, albeit small, uptick encourages us to continue our efforts on ensuring a downward trend.
- Our lower-banded roles are more likely to be occupied by women than by men.
- Our female employees on average are younger and have worked at the Treasury for less time than their male colleagues.
- Women who have worked for the Treasury for 1-5 years are on average slightly better paid than their male counterparts.
- Our Māori and Pacific representation is significantly lower than in the broader public service workforce. Generally, this is due to our attracting low numbers of applications from these ethnicities for roles (rather than their being disproportionately unsuccessful throughout our recruitment processes).
Recent initiatives#
We have over the years made significant progress with closing the gender pay gap, though we acknowledge that we still have a way to go. The progress we've made can in part be attributed to our recent initiatives to close our gender pay gaps. These initiatives have included:
- actively monitoring and adjusting like-for-like pay gaps through remuneration rounds
- using a 'starting salary calculator' during recruitment remuneration decisions
- flexible-by-default work practices, which have been in place since 2018
- reducing bias when reviewing people-related policies
- monitoring our continuing effort on having gender-balanced leadership levels, and
- supporting women's leadership development through active promotion of and central funding for developmental opportunities.
Many of our occupational, age, and ethnic groups are not large enough for enabling robust quantitative analysis. Given that it is critical to understand experiences of women in these groups, we are working closely with our Treasury Women's Network (TWN) on capturing qualitative data to support meaningful action and implementation of our plan. (eg, consultation on this plan and through planned focus groups and drop-in sessions). We are also anticipating working closely with our ethnic groups in 2023, on the ethnic pay gaps, to familiarise these groups with the action plan and to collaborate on the plan's implementation.
Summary of our action plan for 2023#
Our action plan features the Kia Toipoto focus areas, which are grouped by the facet of the employee life cycle we aim to strengthen. In order to be successful, we acknowledge our action plan must work in tandem with our Inclusion and Diversity strategy.
These areas, and the priorities as listed, are:
- Recruitment
- the Talent Attraction Project, the aim of which includes attracting diverse talent
- strengthen our education for hiring managers
- improve representation of Māori, Pacific, and other ethnic groups throughout the various stages of the recruitment process.
- Monitoring and reporting
- continue to monitor the same or similar roles for gender and ethnic pay gaps, through our annual remuneration round and quarterly reporting to senior leadership
- embed our recent upgrades to employee ethnicity data collection.
- Career pathways and progression
- provide career development support for our business support cohort (eg, team administrators) over and above existing options
- ensure our processes for talent progression are free from bias, including within the analyst/advisor cohort to senior and principal roles
- increase the availability of targeted development options for Māori and Pacific employees.
- Talent pipeline
- actively seek gender and ethnic balance in our intern and graduate cohorts
- redesign and relaunch the Treasury's school visits programme.
- Workplace culture in alignment with the Papa Pounamu priorities
- co-facilitate focus group sessions with our employee-led networks
- pilot Mana Aki, the public service's cultural competence e-learning module
- develop a Reasonable Accommodations[1] policy.
Note
- [1] Reasonable accommodation is the term used to describe creating an environment intended to ensure equality of opportunity. Accommodations can be physical, religious, mental or emotional, academic, etc.
Our demographics#
Workforce composition#
As at 30 September 2022, our workforce comprised 572 permanent and fixed-term employees. Their gender and ethnic representation is shown in Table 1. Most of our employees are permanently based in Wellington (also as at 30 September 2022 - see Appendix A for details of the methodology for data analysis).
Note that:
- A small subset of our employees have not stated a gender or identified as being gender diverse; in the interests of privacy, we have not included them in our analysis other than where gender is not a factor.
- Since one person may identify with multiple ethnicities, ethnicity percentages can add up to more than 100%.
| Workforce representation % |
All managers % |
Leaders: Tiers 2-3 % |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| GENDER | |||
| Men | 49.3% | 52% | 50% |
| Women | 50% | 47% | 50% |
| Another gender | 0.7% | 1% | |
| ETHNICITY | |||
| European | 74.3% | 92% | 95.5% |
| Māori | 5.3% | 7% | 4.5% |
| Asian | 14.3% | 3% | 4.5% |
| Pacific Peoples | 1.6% | 2% | 4.5% |
| Middle Eastern/Latin American/African | 2.9% | 1% | 0% |
| Other | 1.1% | 0% | 0% |
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
Table 2 shows our gender and employment type breakdown. As at 30 September 2022, 50% of our employees are women, 15.4% of whom work part-time (part-time being anything less than 80 hours a fortnight) – compared with 7.8% of male employees.
| Gender | Employment type | Employees | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women | Fixed-term | Full-time (80 hours/fortnight) |
7 |
| Part-time | 1 | ||
| Permanent | Full-time | 224 | |
| Part-time | 39 | ||
| Seconded-out | 7 | ||
| Extended leave (including parental) |
8 | ||
| Men | Fixed-term | Full-time (80 hours/fortnight) |
8 |
| Part-time | 0 | ||
| Permanent | Full-time | 244 | |
| Part-time | 23 | ||
| Seconded out | 6 | ||
| Extended leave (including parental) |
1 | ||
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
It is worth noting that we only capture formal flexible working arrangements that relate to hours worked. While Table 2 only references 'part-time' flexible work, the Treasury's flexible working approach is broader and includes flexibility relating to schedule, location, leave, and role (how work is performed and divided). In our regular all-staff survey responses, our flexible working practices are cited by many employees as what they enjoy the most about working for the Treasury (see the section on 'Looking back: what we've done so far and will continue with'.)
Management and leadership #
In their latest workforce data release (2022), Te Kawa Mataaho have reported that women hold 55.8% of senior leadership roles (defined as Tiers 1-3) in the public service. Within the Treasury, women hold 47.8% of senior leadership roles (by, for comparison purposes, this same definition of Tiers 1-3). Across our cohort of managers, men and women are generally represented evenly and this has remained so over the past year. Our senior leadership team and manager cohorts, while gender-balanced, are predominantly European and are subject to fluctuation given our small numbers of senior leaders overall.
As at 30 September 2022, we have three women (including the chief executive) and four men on the Executive Leadership Team. Kaiurungi is our Tier 3 leadership group. The Māori word 'Kaiurungi' is used to refer to those who steer or guide the organisation. This group comprises nine women (including the Tier 2 chair) and five men.
Gender representation#
Figure 1: Women in senior leadership 2002-2022
Source: Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2022[2]
Occupational groups
Women comprise between 40% and 60% of the workforce in half our 17 directorates and groups, across policy, financial and corporate functions. Women are under-represented in the Information and Technology and Economic Systems groups, and over-represented in the People and Wellbeing, Organisational Strategy & Performance, and Public Sector Managementgroups.
Role groupings
Women make up 42.9% of our whole policy cohort, although have higher representation in analyst/advisor and senior analyst/advisor roles than in principal advisor roles. Along with almost half our people leaders, more than 50% of the Financial and Commercial group's roles are held by women. Women are heavily over-represented in business support roles, such as executive assistant and team assistant.[3]
Women make up 50% of our graduate and intern cohorts, although this can change from year-to-year – depending on candidate interests, qualifications and availability, and placement opportunities.
Grades
As previously noted, there tend to be more women in lower-graded roles and fewer in the higher-graded (ie, in more senior roles). Women make up 74.1% of the lower quarter of grades (11 to 14F) but only 43.9% of the senior grades (21 to 24). See Figure 4.
Ages
The Treasury's workforce is slightly younger than the public service average of 44 years (Te Kawa Mataaho 2022). Our average age is 40.8 years old, with women at the Treasury on average one to two years younger than men. Women comprise 51.7% of employees aged 50 and under, and 45.9% of all employees are over 50 years of age.
Tenure
There are also differences reflected in tenure within the organisation; the average tenure for women at the Treasury is 4.3 years, whereas for men it is 6.3 years. The public service average is 8.2 years (Te Kawa Mataaho, 2022; not broken down by gender).
Ethnic representation#
Most of our employees (92.6%) have reported identifying with at least one ethnicity, with 15% identifying with more than one and a small number identifying with three ethnicities. Note that every report of ethnicity was counted and assigned to a level 1 category[4], and, as per Te Kawa Mataaho guidance, employees who have not reported identifying with an ethnicity have not been counted (included). This means that when looking at ethnicity, the numbers may not match the overall headcount.
Figure 2: Ethnic diversity at the Treasury and in the public service 2022[5]
Source: Te Kawa Mataaho's Workforce Data 2022
While there has been a small upward trend in the percentage of Māori and Pacific Peoples in our workforce over recent years, we still have some way to go before we can say that our workforce is representative of New Zealand's population. We are less ethnically diverse than the public service on average, although this is slowly changing over time. For example, in 2000, 91.6% of Treasury employees identified as European and 3.9% as Asian; in September 2022, this was 80.6% and 15% respectively when counting multiple reported ethnicities. This also means that we have slightly higher Asian representation in our workforce than in the broader public service (13.4%). See Figure 2.
Notes
- [2] Data provided to Te Kawa Mataaho for their workforce data release is provided as at 30 June 2022, therefore there may be slight differences in what appears in this report, which uses data as at 30 September 2022.
- [3] Role categories are assigned by internal systems and may be subject to further refinement/definition. For simplicity, all employees below team leader level in the Treasury's Corporate and Shared Services function (except for business support roles) have been categorised as CSS, rather than in their functional specialities (eg, HR Advisor).
- [4] This refers to level 1 of workforce classification of ethnicity: Māori, European, Pacific Peoples, Middle Eastern/Latin American/African (MELAA), Asian, and Other.
- [5] If an individual reported identifying with two ethnicities that fall into the same Level 1 category – eg, NZ European and Australian, or Chinese and Filipino – this was counted only once.
Pay gaps - current and historical trends#
Gender pay gaps#
Organisational level
At the organisational level, although there has been a slight increase over the past year, our gender pay gap has generally continued to decrease over time, much like as it has in the public service overall. See Figure 3.
Our mean gender pay gap has, however, increased from 9.7% as at 30 September 2021 to 10.8% as at 30 September 2022. This is slightly higher than the overall public service gender pay gap of 7.7% reported in the 2022 Public Service Workforce data release: Te Kawa Mataaho's Workforce Data 2022.
Patterns of 'occupational grouping' (whereby women are over-represented in lower-paid occupational groups and men over-represented in higher occupational groups), have a significant impact on gender pay gaps. This is also an issue in similar organisations overseas and across the public service[6].
Figure 3: Mean gender pay gap over time
Source: Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2022
Specific gender pay gaps#
As noted above, one of the primary drivers of our gender pay gap is occupational grouping, a pattern we generally see emerging as pay gaps increase by grade, tenure, and age. The interplay between these factors can be complex, and may be subject to legacy issues (eg, organisational, sectoral, or societal) still evident in parts of the wider system.
For example, women at the Treasury fill 62% of the lower-paid jobs (the bottom quartile/25% of salaries when divided into quartiles), but only 38% of the higher-paid (the top quartile/25%). See Figure 4.
Figure 4: Gender representation (%) by pay quartile
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
By grade
Only a few of our pay grades had sufficient numbers of both men and women for comparison, so the grades have been combined into groups. External research examining the gender pay gap in the New Zealand labour market suggests that the pay gap increases for women in more senior positions and on higher salaries[7]. There is a negative gender pay gap of 12.6% for grades 14F and below (see Figure 5) – this may be connected to experience: women in this group have, on average, been at the Treasury for 4.4 years, compared with 2.0 years for their male counterparts.
Figure 5: Gender representation and gender pay gap by grade
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
The gender pay gap is almost negligible for grade brackets 15-17F and 21-24, but is 4.2% for grades 18-20F. This may be partially attributed to differences in tenure – men in grades 18‑20F have, on average, been at the Treasury 3.2 years longer than their female counterparts. While, however, the hiring of men to our higher bands is having an impact on our overall gender pay gap, the specific gender pay gap for this grade bracket is negligible despite men having significantly higher average tenure (see Figure 6). Data on work experience prior to joining the Treasury was not available.[8]
Figure 6: Tenure at the Treasury by grade
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
By tenure
Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa notes that using tenure to analyse gender pay gaps at different levels can help show if men and women who have been at the organisation for the same amount of time have made the same progress (in relation to pay).
There is a gender pay gap of 17.8% when comparing the average remuneration of men and women who have worked at the Treasury for more than 10 years. For employees who have been at the Treasury for less than 10 years, the gender pay gap is somewhat lower, with those who have worked at the Treasury for 1-5 years experiencing a negative average gender pay gap.
Some of the increase in the gender pay gap as tenure rises may be attributable to occupational grouping. Women with more than 10 years' employment at the Treasury (n=29) are more likely to be in lower grades than their male counterparts (n=50): 48.3% of the women in this group are below grade 18, whereas only 10% of the men are.
The gender pay gap for new starters - those who have worked at the Treasury for under a year - has increased. This increase, however, is due in part to the appointment of men to several senior leadership roles over the past year. When removing these hires from the calculation, the gender pay gap for new starters is closer to the organisational gender pay gap, which is 10.8%.
By role
Our analyst/advisor cohort (n=259, 42.9% women) is the single largest role group in the Treasury, and one of the few with sufficient numbers of both women and men to allow for analysis. It has a mean gender pay gap of 6.9% and a median gender pay gap of 4.3%. There are similar numbers of men and women in the analyst/advisor and senior analyst/advisor sub-groups[9], and a negligible gender pay gap for both sub-groups.
Women also represent less than a quarter of the principal analyst/advisor group, although the gender pay gap for this group is smaller than the organisational mean gender pay gap. The reasons for low representation of women in this group are likely to be multi-faceted.
Te Kawa Mataaho noted in their 2021 Workforce Data release that the proportion of women in principal advisor positions in the public service was lower than in analyst, senior analyst, and other policy roles. While we previously considered this could account for our low representation, in its 2022 data release, Te Kawa Mataaho found that, “This gap has narrowed substantially by 2022, with women making up 61% of roles at advisor level and 55% at principal advisor level.” This could be due to the current competitiveness of the labour market. Therefore, we acknowledge there is further analysis and action to be taken at the Treasury in relation to this cohort.
Women comprise half of the total graduate analysts/advisors as at 30 September 2022. However, this male/female balance varies from year-to-year – influenced by candidate interests and placement opportunities, as well as by the availability and composition of talent emerging from New Zealand universities. In 2017, 2019, and this year for example, the gender balance in the graduate cohort was approximately 50:50, whereas in other years it has not been as balanced.
By age
Women's representation in our workforce varies by age; in most age groups, there are slightly more women than men. There are, however, fewer women in the late-forties age group (45.5% are women), and men are in the majority for employees aged 55 and older.
The gender pay gap also fluctuates by age, but rises steeply from the mid-fifties onwards (the 55 to 60 and 60+ age brackets have been combined to ensure adequate numbers for analysis). This may have a significant influence on our organisational gender pay gap; for under-55s, the gender pay gap is 6.6% – whereas for over 55s, it is 29.6%. Over 50% of the women aged over 55 hold roles graded below 18, compared with 11.1% of the men.
Higher pay gaps for some women over 55 have also been observed in external research[10].
Figure 7: Gender representation and gender pay gap by age
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
By employee type and class
Employee 'class' refers to whether an employee is fixed-term or permanent (ie, their 'class' will be one or the other).
The gender pay gap for part-time employees is 6.3% - compared with 11.9% for full time employees. Of those working part-time, 63% are women.
The gender pay gap for fixed-term employees is larger than that for permanent employees, although this regularly fluctuates and the number in each gender group is not large enough to assess the possible reasons for this. The gender pay gap for permanent employees is 10.3% as at 30 September 2022.
Ethnic pay gaps#
In New Zealand, large ethnic pay gaps exist - compounded for women of diverse ethnicities, combining to create larger pay gaps compared with the average earnings of all men[11]. Manatū Wāhine, Ministry for Women, says, “The gaps in pay between all men and wāhine Māori, and between all men and Pacific women, are substantially higher than the overall gender pay gap.”
There are relative ethnic pay differences at the Treasury, with the average salaries for some ethnic groups being less than that for other groups[12]. It is, however, important to note that some ethnic groups have low numbers of representation at the Treasury, and that the results may also be affected by very high (or low) individual salaries. For this reason, median remuneration has been used (individuals' privacy is also a consideration).
The employees who did not specify an ethnicity, with which they identified, have not been counted (included) in this section of the report.
Figure 8: Median remuneration by ethnicity
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
Te Kawa Mataaho (2022) suggests that, “Like the gender pay gap, ethnic pay gaps can relate to occupational segregation or the occupation profile of a particular ethnic group. Māori, Pacific and Asian public servants are over-represented in lower-paid occupation groups.” They also suggest that, “There are ethnic differences in terms of public service occupations. European staff are over-represented in higher-paid occupations such as managers and policy analysts. Māori and Pacific staff are well represented as inspectors and regulatory officers, social, health and education workers, clerical and administration workers and as contact centre workers but less so in other professions.”
Our overall ethnic pay gap, as at 30 September 2022, sits at a mean of 18.6%, and is largely influenced by grade distribution - given that 63% of non-European employees sit below grade 18, compared with 37% of European employees.
Our small sample sizes make it somewhat challenging to effectively examine the causes of the ethnic pay gap, as well as the effects of intersectionality (eg, gender and ethnicity together). There are only sufficient numbers for analysis of the gender pay gaps for female European and Asian employees respectively.
Te Kawa Mataaho's Workforce Data 2022 shows that, in the public service, men are paid more on average than women in each ethnic group, and that Europeans are paid more on average than other ethnicities[13]. Compared with all men, there was still a small gender pay gap (4.8%) for European women (n=216) at the Treasury, and a larger one (25%) for Asian women (n=40).
Te Kawa Mataaho (2021) suggests that, “There is higher Pacific and Asian representation in younger employees, and this may be slowing improvement in pay gaps”, as new recruits tend to have lower pay. This may have some influence - the average tenure for Asian employees at the Treasury is 3 years, compared with 5.5 years for non-Asian employees - although there may be other factors to consider.
Figure 9: Gender pay gaps for European and Asian women
Source: Treasury employee data, September 2022
Notes
- [6] Workforce Data - Pay gaps - Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission
- [7] Based on Pacheco, Li & Cochrane (2017) cited in Research on the gender pay gap in New Zealand | Manatū Wāhine Ministry for Women
- [8] Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2022.
- [9] The analyst/advisor cohort described here includes roles in the Treasury that provide policy advice to the Government and also some similar roles in other areas of the organisation.
- [10] For example, Sin, Stillman and Fabling (2017) https://www.motu.nz/assets/Documents/our-work/population-and-labour/individual-and-group-outcomes/Gender-Wage-Gap-Executive-Summary.pdf; and Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2021) https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/Gender_pay_gap_fact_sheet_Feb2020.pdf
- [11] Source: Manatū Wāhine Ministry for Women
- [12] Public Service Māori pay gap 6.5%, Pacific pay gap 17.7%, Asian pay gap 12.4% (please note these are mean, not median) Source: Te Kawa Mataaho, 2022.
- [13] Source: Workforce Data - Pay gaps - Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission
Looking back: What we've done so far and will continue with#
The Treasury continues to demonstrate our commitment to the Kia Toipoto milestones, and has developed an action plan to strengthen our ongoing pay gap initiatives. Key activity is included in the following:
Equal pay #
- Addressing gender pay gaps has been a strong feature of our current remuneration strategy, eg, through regular remuneration reviews, targeting the closure of like-for-like gender pay gaps.
- The Treasury has developed a starting salary calculator. Since mid-2020, proposed salaries for all new hires and returning secondees are reviewed against those of other women and men within the relevant pay bands. This helps with determining the impact the salaries would have on the gender pay gap in the team, directorate, and organisation – enabling hiring managers to make more informed decisions.
- These interventions have ensured pay gaps are not present in same or similar roles.
Flexible working by default#
- The Treasury has been offering flexible working by default[14] since May 2018 - we continue to update our technology, practices, guidance, communications, culture, and expectations to reflect this.
- Priorities include promoting our flexible working approach as part of the employee value proposition during recruitment and induction, supporting our people leaders with embracing flexible working and leading flexible working teams, and providing support and resources to enable our people to adopt the flexible working practices available at the Treasury.
- We acknowledge and emphasise that flexible working looks different for different people - ie, their preference may be for flexibility of role, place, schedule, or leave.
- The success of our approach has been validated through regular employee surveys - our flexible working practices are cited by many employees (as recently as in the latest employee survey of September 2022) as what they enjoy the most about working for the Treasury.
Addressing bias or discrimination in remuneration systems or HR practices#
- We process job advertisements through a 'decoder', to enhance the usage of gender-neutral language.
- Our recruitment templates (documents) ensure our people leaders are prompted to consider the potential impact - on gender balance - of selection decisions.
- Many of our people leaders and panel members for interviews have completed unconscious bias training. We are currently reviewing our related training offerings for opportunities to enhance these.
- There is a focus on 'mixed' panels (ie, to include people of differing gender, ethnicity, and seniority) for interviews and short-listing when recruiting.
- Our annual remuneration review is followed by a process with which adjustments are made to salaries of the same or similar roles where disparities arise.
- With a focus on process improvements, new reporting has been established to determine at which stages in the recruitment process the further progress of women or representatives of particular ethnic groups may be ceasing.
- There is more (than has been the case in the past) transparency of salary and remuneration ranges with the advertising of roles.
- Retrospective analysis of the progression of graduates includes a gender focus.
Increasing gender and ethnic representation in leadership#
- We continue to focus on gender-neutral recruitment practices, including reviewing the selection criteria for leadership roles.
- We have a 40:20:40[15] gender balance across the Treasury's leadership cohort, and regularly monitor this.
- In order to increase the diversity in our graduate and intern cohort, we broadened the success criteria to allow for more diversity. We also ensure our recruitment process for these cohorts is inclusive, and provides opportunities for candidates to share examples of personal leadership competence from a community perspective as well as from a work perspective.
- Our Te Puna Rōia (Legal Team) implemented a recruitment and retention model designed to make their team culture and opportunities more attractive to Māori lawyers. This has led to more Māori lawyers joining Te Puna Rōia. The team's diverse make-up is recognised as one of its strengths – not only within the Treasury itself, but also across the wider government's legal network.
- We continue to apply an ethnicity 'lens' when hiring for senior leadership roles.
Equitable progression opportunities that support women, Māori, Pacific, and other ethnic employees with achieving their career aspirations#
- We have invested in women's professional development through dedicated budget towards Treasury Women's Network members.
- We have begun evaluating our 'internal talent pipeline' data, to ensure there is appropriate representation and to check for potential bias or inequities.
Fostering an inclusive workplace in alignment with Papa Pounamu priorities#
- We have undertaken analysis and modification of our recruitment practices - to improve the diversity of candidates reaching the interview stages.
- We have implemented training, for people leaders, to reduce bias in recruitment decisions and to lead inclusively.
- We have a continued focus on strengthening individual and organisational cultural competence, through Te Puna Anamata (The Treasury's Te Reo Māori plan) and Whāinga Amorangi (The Treasury's Strengthening Māori Capability plan).
Access to our active employee-led network groups, and to our culture and language groups, is a key component of our employee value proposition. These include: our Treasury Women's Network, China Capable Network, Treasury Rainbow Network, and Te Puna Wai – our waiata group, which leads and helps uphold mana and tikanga within the Treasury.
Feedback from our Treasury Women's Network#
We have with consulted with our (internal) Treasury Women's Network on the findings within this report - and on our action plan. This collaboration centred on their insights into the patterns of grouping of women in lower-banded, business support roles, and the potential reasons for this.
To explore this issue further, and to gain wider internal perspectives on perceptions of bias for different groups, we have indicated in our action plan that we anticipate co-facilitating - alongside the Treasury Women's Network working group members - focus group sessions in relation to this.
We plan to continue these conversations with a focus on progression and support.
We are also anticipating working closely with our ethnic groups, on the ethnic pay gaps, to familiarise these groups with the action plan and to collaborate on the plan's implementation.
Looking ahead: Our action plan for 2023#
Based on our data, the areas in the following table are those on which we should and will focus in the year ahead. The priority is addressing the areas where there is gender and/or ethnic over or under-representation that may be driving pay gaps. In order to be successful, we acknowledge that our action plan must work in tandem with our Inclusion and Diversity strategy. While we work to address aspects of diversity and equity through our Kia Toipoto action plan, we must also ensure our workplace practices are inclusive.
| Area | Activity | Actions | Success factors and targets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recruitment |
Talent Attraction Project Our Talent team has initiated the Talent Attraction Project, to review and update our full suite of recruitment collateral - the aim includes improving our appeal to diverse talent. There are a number of facets to this project that it's anticipated will help us with addressing some areas in which there is gender and/or ethnic over or under-representation. |
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Education for hiring managers We have identified an opportunity to strengthen our education for hiring managers, in relation to the starting salary calculator, and with a 'Recruitment' 101 e‑learning module, which would incorporate education on unconscious bias. |
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Gender and ethnic representation We have identified several areas of unbalanced representation, which is driving our pay gaps. We have selected gender and ethnicity areas of focus, to improve representation in certain areas as well as throughout the stages of the recruitment process. |
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| Monitoring and reporting |
Salaries for the same or similar roles We will embed the Te Kawa Mataaho guidance on salaries for the same or similar roles, and enhance our reporting on salaries/gender pay gap for our larger role groups. |
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Continuous improvements to our data We have recently upgraded our ethnicity data capture, to allow employees to enter up to three ethnicities with which they identify. This has provided us with a clearer picture of our ethnic demographics. We aim to embed this new feature, and to remind employees to provide their ethnicity data via Kōrero Mai, our regular engagement survey, or directly through our online HR kiosk. |
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| Career pathways and development |
Business support roles In our business support cohort (eg, team administrators and executive assistants), which are typically lower-banded roles, women are over-represented. Through our collaboration with the Treasury Women's Network, we plan to address this by offering career development workshops for those in business support roles seeking career progression. |
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Career progression for our analyst/advisor cohort While there is a gender balance in our analyst/advisor cohort and the senior analyst/advisor sub-group, women make up only a quarter of the principal advisor sub-group. We plan to explore the possible reasons for this through our talent mapping. |
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Leadership development We increasingly provide targeted development options for our Māori and Pacific employees. |
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| Talent pipeline |
Summer internship and graduate programmes We develop our talent pipeline, by seeking gender and ethnic balance with our intern and graduate cohorts. We understand this may have a negative effect on our pay gaps by increasing representation of these groups in these early-in-workforce, lower-banded roles. It is, however, anticipated that this activity will support representation over time (ie, as people in these cohorts advance to more senior roles). |
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School visits We will revamp our school visits programme to increase awareness of potential careers at the Treasury, for Māori, Pacific, and other ethnic groups. |
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| Our workplace culture in alignment with the Papa Pounamu priorities |
Focus groups with our people We will co-facilitate focus group sessions with our Treasury Women's Network, to gain insights into our employees' perspectives. |
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Pilot Mana Aki We will pilot Mana Aki, the public service's cultural competence e-learning module, within an area of the organisation (yet to be determined). |
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Reasonable Accommodation policy We will develop a Reasonable Accommodation policy, with the aim of increasing our employee value proposition and providing a progressively more inclusive workplace culture. |
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Appendix A: Methodology#
Our data#
Unless stated otherwise, our data throughout this report:
- includes fixed-term and permanent employees, but not temporary/casual employees or contractors/consultants
- is current as at 30 September 2022
- includes all employees seconded out, and employees on extended leave, but not secondees from other agencies working at the Treasury
- is headcount and not FTE
- is based on the mean gender pay gap
- may have been summarised or aggregated where sample sizes are small (fewer than 20 men or 20 women) and/or where individual privacy is a consideration.
It is important to note that, while we have made reference to 'male/female' or 'men/women' throughout this report (in accordance with Te Kawa Mataaho's guidance), we acknowledge and understand that the definition of gender is no longer considered to be simply binary.
Calculating pay gaps - mean and median#
Te Kawa Mataaho has reported the public service gender pay gap - by using average (mean) pay - since 2000. This differs to Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa's approach of using median pay when reporting the gender pay gap for the entire workforce.
Median pay is the middle amount of pay earned: half of employees earn less, and half earn more. Median pay better reflects the pay a typical employee receives.
The public service gender pay gap using median pay is more volatile over time than that using mean pay. The structured nature of pay for many parts of the public service workforce, with large numbers of employees receiving the same pay, is driving this volatility in gender pay gaps using median pay.
In most cases, we have referenced our mean gender pay gaps, however where necessary we use the median. We have calculated these using the following formula:
(Mean male full-time rem - mean female full-time rem)/
(Mean male full-time rem) x 100
OR
(Median male full-time rem - median female full-time rem)/
(Median male full-time rem) x 100