Gender Pay Gap

Thomas Franks Limited is very proud of our reputation and founding principles as a fair and ethical employer, since our inception in 2004. Women continue to be very well represented at every level of the organisation, including in our craft, food service and operational teams, head office support, senior management and at board level. Women make up 62% of our entire Thomas Franks Team.

The majority of roles within the lower quartile are in school locations. In a male dominated industry, we are working hard to be an employer of choice for women. A large portion of our business is in the education sector so late-night shifts are less common than in the hospitality industry more widely. This is attracting more women to Thomas Franks as our working patterns are more complimentary to family life.

Women are also attracted to Thomas Franks because of our industry leading training programmes, which includes support from Michelin-starred chefs. Currently, 73% of our apprentices are women (83% of higher level apprentices) and half of our board. We conduct bespoke face to face DEIB training which has been attended by the whole senior leadership team and additional online DEIB training is a mandatory requirement for all. We have a very active Women’s Group (one of the subgroups of our ‘Thomas Franks For You’ DEIB Group) which helps identify and implement initiatives to further support women in our business. One of their recent suggestions led to the creation of our maternity buddy system to complement our enhanced maternity package, helping to support those returning to work post maternity leave.

We are trying to create more flexibility in roles in the upper quartiles and to provide additional, focused learning opportunities to encourage and support women into more senior, flexible roles. Hybrid and home working is made available to those in suitable roles wherever possible.

As a fair employer, we continue to strive to ensure that all of our recruitment processes are fair and equitable and that training and development opportunities are accessible at all levels, with our development policies being at the very heart of everything we do. We have an Applicant Tracking System, a recruitment tool for faster recruitment and easier access to candidates with the benefit of being able to provide full data reporting on which of our roles and adverts appeal to under represented groups in hospitality to help us to target our advertising accordingly. We ensure that all of our adverts contain salary details.

Neither our median or mean gender pay gap has increased by a % point in the past 12 months. We are acutely aware however that there is still much to work on to reduce it. The mean bonus gender pay gap has reduced by 11% in the past 12 months and the median bonus gender pay gap has reduced by 2%. We are also confident that some of the initiatives we have introduced over the past 24 months will continue to have a positive impact moving forwards.

A new Mentorship Programme to identify, support and develop diverse talent further supports women and other under represented groups at senior levels to develop in the business and we hope to really see the benefits of this in the next few years.

We strive to ensure that great talent is represented throughout the business structure regardless of gender and 66% of our Management Development Trainees in 2024 were female. Our Future Leaders programme focuses strongly on gender identity and is now an important part of our annual Learning and Development programme, this continues to prepare and support team members to develop into more senior positions within the business with a knowledge and understanding of gender specific challenges. We seek to use all development opportunities to impact positively on diminishing the gender pay gap and to attend management development training individuals must have already completed DEIB training.

We know that we have more work to do to encourage more flexible working hours to meet the needs of modern family life and to make work accessible for men and women who have caring responsibilities. Whilst hospitality remains a service sector which has a reputation for unsociable working hours and demanding expectations, we have female staff at every level who succeed and through development, continue to overcome these boundaries. We know we need to do more to make work at all levels more accessible to more women.

We are fully committed to progressing towards greater equality for both achievement and opportunity. We are continuing with our review of the pay and benefits structure and the development of clear career pathways to support our future female leaders.

In Thomas Franks, we have always paid equal rates of pay, regardless of gender or age and we will continue to do so. We will continue to work hard to ensure that diversity, equality and fairness is applied in every aspect of our business life.