Gousto’s 2023 Gender Pay Gap

By Timo

Many businesses will agree that 2023 was a year like no other. Soaring food inflation and the cost of living crisis are just some of the challenging macro pressures we faced. But no matter the external context, we never lose sight of our purpose, a huge part of which is to have a positive impact on people.

For our customers, this meant protecting them from the true effects of inflation by keeping our prices as low as possible and introducing the Save and Savour range to reduce the cost of their weekly box.

And for our people at Gousto, we held strong on our commitments to gender equity and our efforts to achieve gender balance across all roles. In fact, we managed to keep our gender pay gap pretty stable through quite a turbulent time, even seeing a small improvement from last year.

What is the gender pay gap?

This is the median difference between pay for men and women, regardless of their roles and seniority. It is different to equal pay, which ensures men and women employed in the same roles receive equal remuneration.

Gousto’s gender pay gap

Gousto’s 2023 gender pay gap was 4.7%, slightly down from 4.8% in 2022 and a huge 54% less than 2020. This is also much lower than the 2023 UK average of 14.3%* and even lower than the wider tech sector which sits at 15.6%**. However, with our ultimate goal of no gender pay gap, there is still work to be done!

What are we doing to close the gap?

We’ve been consistently improving the gender pay gap at Gousto thanks to a strategic plan to amplify our inclusive culture and dismantle systemic workplace issues for women. The following initiatives were launched in 2023 to directly influence a smaller pay gap:

Continued to review job adverts to remove gender-biassed language, ensuring they are more accessible and inclusive.
Focused on women’s health; continued to support Jo’s Cervical Cancer trust pledge “Time to Test”, ensuring all women have time-off during working time to access cervical screening and other health appointments, and consulting our workforce on introducing female-centric policies.
Continued to support our Women in Tech community whilst establishing our Women in Ops community – both provide an open network to support, champion, connect and inspire progression of women. They have hosted multiple speaker events, blogs and most importantly, championed change.
Established a permanent hybrid approach that provides flexibility – both in terms of hours and work location.
Launched new policies supporting those undergoing fertility, those affected by baby loss and those with menopausal and perimenopausal symptoms.
Worked hard to collate equality data on our workforce so that we can best understand, focus and measure becoming a truly inclusive workplace.

Over the next year we’re committed to:

Launching our levelling and banding framework, which provides a foundation for us to go deeper into pay equity by being more precise about comparing roles that are the same or similar.
Creating an overarching women’s community for all areas of our business – building more two-way conversations to steer our thinking and address root causes of exclusion and bias for Women.
Providing a greater level of support for menopausal and perimenopausal women and creating dialogue and support for other women’s issues such as periods at work.
Rolling out further inclusivity education to help people see new perspectives and remove bias and barriers for women. Supported by expanding female-centric awareness days in our inclusion calendar and underpinned by heightened awareness around International Women’s Day during March.
Create a robust framework to support returning mothers.

Having to report on gender is a legal requirement. However, we would like to make note that not everyone identifies as their legal gender status. We wholeheartedly embrace and support our non-binary colleagues and customers. We hope that with continued positive change, there will be better representation for all groups.