Introduction

Adica are committed to having a diverse and inclusive culture where all employees are provided with an opportunity to grow, develop and advance their careers regardless of gender. We are proud that our workforce is 59% female and that our Executive Leadership Team is 83% female (at the time of the WGEA reporting 2023 submission).

In 2023 we were recognised as an Employer of Choice. We are also a certified Family Inclusive Workplace and are proud to be a member of the Diversity Council Australia.

We have strong policies in place for our working parents, including gender neutral paid parental leave for all parents (14 weeks paid plus paid superannuation on unpaid leave components), a flexible working policy and supported flexible working arrangements for many of our employees.

However, like many organisations we still have more to do. We acknowledge the importance of continuous improvement in workplace gender equality and in conjunction with WGEA and the federal and state governments, it’s important that we also look to address other economic circumstances to support working parents and carers to participate in the workforce.

In Australia generally the gender pay gap currently stands at 23%, in 2012 it was 17%, so it’s moved backwards by 6% in a decade. It’s estimated that it will take another 132 years to close the global economic gender pay gap, executive teams will take 29 years to reach parity in gender and 24 years to reach cultural parity. Both employers and governments have a responsibility to address this.

The following gender pay gap report addresses our areas of strength and also our improvement opportunities when it comes to our gender pay gap. We are a small organisation in Australia at just 230 employees but we are showing our commitment to reducing our gender pay gap by setting specific targets and actions to demonstrate our commitment to embrace a diverse work force at all levels within Adica.

Our Gender Pay Gap

Median Gender Pay Gap

Our median Gender Pay Gap is 32.1% which is slightly lower than our industry benchmark. This indicates that in our organisation we have a disproportionate concentration of females in lower paid positions.

It’s important to mention here that this is not to be confused with women and men not being paid the same for the same or comparable job in our organisation, this is equal pay and has been a legal requirement since 1969.

Gender Composition

We acknowledge that we have a gender pay gap and like many organisations it’s because we have a disproportionate concentration of females in our workforce that make up our lower to lower-middle positions and stronger representation of men in the upper and middle quartiles. This becomes very apparent when we look at our non-management workforce profile with numbers of females in these positions increasing to 64% in 2022 – 2023, up from 60% in the 2020 – 2021 reporting period. Furthermore, when reviewing our part-time workforce, 87% are women and only 13% are men.

Pleasingly we are seeing an increase in women in our management positions, increasing to 45% in the 2022-2023 reporting period, up from 43% in the previous reporting period. Representation on our Executive Leadership Team (including our CEO) is now at gender parity, with a 50/50 split of males and females making up our Executive team.

When considering the average (mean) total remuneration our gender pay gap reduces to 13.7% compared to 30.6% for industry.

Adica's Action on Gender Equality

Recruitment

We will be implementing targeted recruitment campaigns to focus on increasing our male representation at lower to lower-middle quartile positions. Our recruitment approach is always to hire the best person for the role regardless of gender or other DEI elements. Our customer contact centre is based in a regional location and does present additional challenges when hiring. This is mostly due to a regional government incentive in the area a few years ago which has driven extensive competition for talent in the region. We are looking at alternative options to remove location specific roles to be able to engage talent from a broader geographical perspective and this should assist us in improving our gender representation in both our Customer Service Officers and Claims Consultant positions.

Targets:

Lower Quartile: increase male representation in these positions to 25% (from 19%) by the 2024 – 2025 WGEA reporting period.

Lower Middle Quartile: increase male representation in these positions to 37% (from 32%) by the 2024 – 2025 WGEA reporting period.

Board composition: our Board gender composition is currently 14% female (Chair) compared to industry benchmarking of 27%. This is an area that we will review further over the next 12 – 18 months.

Retention: we are looking to implement more beneficial survey tools to get better data and insights from employees who join us, remain with us longer term or decide to move on from Adica. This will help us develop more meaningful retention strategies and address particular areas of concern, for example, if we noticed a spike in parents not returning from parental leave, what do we need to do to address this.

We are also planning a review of our existing flexible working requests and arrangements, those that were both approved and declined, to determine any patterns and what forms of flexible work are being requested, supported and adopted, e.g., job share arrangements. We must also ensure that our leaders are equipped with the skills to have meaningful conversations to support our people in their work life, to help make their home life just that little bit easier.

We’re providing inclusion training for all leaders and require all our employees to live by our culture doctrine which outlines our commitment and expectations around psychological safety at work.

Progression

Upper Middle to Upper Quartiles: We will have continued focus on providing our female employees with career progression opportunities at the upper middle and upper quartiles. Much of this work will align with our continuous improvement through our Family Inclusive action plan specifically focusing on flexibility and gender neutral paid parental leave to encourage greater participation and increased support at work for both females and males.

Useful definitions for reference

Pay Gap vs Equal Pay

The gender pay gap is the difference in average earnings between women and men in the workforce and should not be confused with women and men being paid the same for the same or comparable job which is equal pay.

Mean and Median Explained

The mean (or average) pay gap is calculated by adding all employees’ salaries together and dividing it by the number of employees.

The median represents the middle value after sorting the gender pay of female and male employees of an organisation from lowest to highest.

Legislative Requirements

Changes to the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 were passed by Federal Parliament in March 2023 and were introduced to encourage employers to deploy and drive workplace policies, practices and environments that support gender equality. As a result of this reform, from February 2024 the Workplace Gender Equality Agency will publish the gender pay gap for employers with a workforce of 100 or more employees, requiring employers with 500 or more employees to introduce structured Gender Equality Indicators (GEIs) to encourage action.