GENDER PAY GAP REPORT

WHAT IS THE GENDER PAY GAP REPORT?

Enacted in 2017 the UK Government’s Gender Pay Gap (GPG) reporting legislation is an amendment to the Equality Act 2010 and requires employers of over 250 people to report:

• • • The proportion of men and women in each pay quartile
    • The Mean and Median gender pay gap in hourly pay
    • The Mean and Median bonus gender pay gap, and the proportion of men and women receiving a bonus payment

This is different from the wider terms of the Equality Act which ensures parity in pay for men and women in the same role.

The data in this report is based on a snapshot from 5 April 2020 and any bonus pay received in the 12 months before this date.

THE LANDSCAPE

The Gender Pay Gap in the UK has reduced in the last 10 years but is still in favour of men. According to the April 2019 data (a year prior to the reported data), the games industry has a median gender pay gap of 18.8%, compared to a national median of 9.6%. Read more.

OUR RESULTS

You can take a look at our previous reports here:

• Gender Pay Gap Report 2019
• Gender Pay Gap Report 2018

The retention of growth of women at the studio over the past year has been a significant achievement. We have seen an +11% increase of women promoted and a +3% increase in growth since our last report.

Our median gender pay gap is now 26.4%, which is up from the previous reporting period. Our mean gender pay gap is 26.9%, also up from the same report.

To be clear, Splash Damage does not have a disparity for men and women performing the same job role. Men and women at Splash Damage are being paid equally for equivalent roles.

We have taken a number of actions to address this, which you can read about in our commitments section.

1. GENDER REPRESENTATION

Since the 2019 report, our gender representation has been steadily increasing and has continued to increase since the time of reporting (April 2020). We are aware that we need to continue doing more, as the representation of women in our studio is still under the average of the games industry.

We’re proud to say that several of our initiatives, including our unconscious bias workshops, our benefits review and ensuring diverse interview panels, have helped us increase representation.

We have committed to continue talking about our Diversity & Inclusion efforts. This should not only help other studios learn from our experiences, but also lets women know that when they join Splash Damage, they will be treated fairly in an environment that is safe, and that will allow everyone to be themselves and to thrive.

2. PAY QUARTILES

Pay Quartiles Explained

Quartiles are calculated by first listing the rates of pay for each employee across the business from lowest to highest, and then splitting that list into four equal-sized groups, then calculating the percentage of men and women in each of these groups.

At Splash Damage, men are overrepresented in our studio’s best-paid jobs, and the proportion of women falls the further up the pale scale you go. Our Lower Quartile has steeply improved, which is consistent with the changes to our overall representation. Our revamp of our promotion and salary review process has already been shown to have an impact on our next report, while our recruitment survey should help us identify further actions for more changes.

3. MEAN & MEDIAN PAY GAPS

Mean & Median Pay Gaps Explained

The mean pay gap compares the average pay for women with the average pay for men. The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle; so the median gender pay gap is the difference between women’s median hourly wage (the middle paid woman) and men’s median hourly wage (the middle paid man).

4. BONUSES

Bonuses Explained

Splash Damage offers generous referral bonuses, while 1% of the studio’s revenue is equally distributed across all staff with at least 1 years’ service with us.

For this reporting period, women’s median bonus pay is 32.8% lower than men’s. This is due to the length of service of several women who did not qualify for all instalments of our revenue share program during the reporting period. 

However, we’re happy to report that for those that did qualify for a bonus, there was a 0% difference in the amount received between men and women.

Bonus Pay

OUR COMMITMENTS

While men and women at Splash Damage are paid the same for performing the same role, we still have work to do to close the gender pay gap, largely due to lack of representation at senior levels of the studio.

We acknowledge that none of the actions we have taken are quick fixes and that it will take us several years to address this particular issue.

With that in mind, here’s a non-exhaustive list of our existing and future commitments:

• • • In August 2020, we cemented our commitments to diversity by promoting Cinzia Musio to be our Diversity & Inclusion Advisor. Cinzia’s work at the studio and in the wider industry has already seen her be recognised by several industry awards, and we will continue to support her in any way we can.
    • We’ve continued to use and revamp our forecasting model for staff progression that highlights anyone being left behind in terms of seniority level or salary; as a result, we promoted 30% of women and 26% of men in 2020. This follows on from our equal number of promotions in 2019.
    • We have rolled out a job description guide at the studio and are in the process of reviewing and updating our job descriptions to eliminate language that may feel exclusive to women.
    • We are now corporate sponsors for Code Coven, an initiative seeking to help marginalised groups find a way into the games industry through providing courses, mentorship and opportunities in the games industry.
    • We are rolling out a recruitment survey seeking to understand the experience candidates have throughout our recruitment process, and what the pool of candidates we have applying for roles looks like.
    • We are in the process of reviewing how we recruit senior leadership and identifying ways to help diversify this layer of the studio.
    • We have also implemented benefits to ensure our employees have great mental-health support: from 1 to 1 counselling sessions, to an employee assistance programme, private healthcare with in-depth mental health support, mental health first aiders, and mental-health sick days.
    • We’re continuing to be committed to Ukie’s #RaiseTheGame pledge and are helping drive Ukie’s EDI strategy as well as sharing knowledge across the industry through their EDI subgroup.
    • We continue to share our learnings with regards to Diversity and Inclusion by speaking at events on the actions we have taken at the studio, hoping that we will inspire other studios to take on some of our learnings and apply them
    • We believe representation is important in the games we create, and we continually strive to improve diversity and inclusivity in the characters that inhabit our worlds.

DECLARATION

I confirm that the data contained within this report is accurate and meets the requirements of the Gender Pay Gap reporting regulations.

Richard Jolly, Co-Founder & CEO