Closing statement from our Director of People & ESG

Closing statement

I am passionate in my role as Director of People & ESG to create a vibrant workplace for all; from diversity and inclusivity, to flexible first working, from mental health & wellbeing to growth and development. Our people are the heart of our business and as Jake Yamashita, our president and CEO explains, we want our people to experience fulfilment through work.

Keeping these goals in mind, the gender pay gap has, and will continue to be a key area of focus for our global business, as well as for my People & ESG strategy for Ricoh UK. It is clear from the data we are reporting that the rate of change has been slow and there is still a long way for us to go to close the gap significantly.

The reporting is helping us to identify specifically where and how to do this, and the data reported should be viewed in the context of historical factors that directly impact the figures, such as our predominantly male field service engineer and sales teams. The technology industries have historically attracted largely male employees. To correct this, we are focusing on the ways in which we can attract women to these roles, for example through STEAM, our recruitment methods and access to training.

During 2021/2022 we have also focused on how we can harness the talent we have within our company and develop them for the future. We hope that by doing this, it will help build our female pipeline into more highly skilled roles, which in turn will help to close our gender pay gap. We have also taken into consideration longer term trends in our data to inform our strategy on closing the gender pay gap. 

Although our figures do show a slight increase in the mean gender pay gap, our median gender pay has shown a decrease which I feel is more reflective of our actual gender pay gap, as the mean figure can be skewed by a few anomalies at the lowest and highest paid levels.  It’s also worth highlighting the progress that has been made; where we now have more female representation in the higher pay quartiles outlined on ‘Our Results’ page.

We are committed to closing our gender pay gap but understand that this will be a long-term journey to ensure we implement change intrinsically within all areas of our business. 

Rebekah Wallis

Director - People
& ESG,
Ricoh UK & Ireland