Understanding our results

Read on to understand our commitment to sustained change and our areas of focus

Understanding our results

Ricoh UK has a long-term approach to addressing the gender pay gap. Our end goal is to achieve greater parity at senior level, and we’re doing this by increasing our female talent pipeline at entry level roles, then accelerating them to more senior positions. 

This longer-term view and our current results indicate that we still have a long way to go and that closing the gap will take some time. The technology industry has typically attracted men in the past, and these historical biases have shaped our current workforce particularly in the areas of field service engineers and sales roles. We have identified these areas where we need most focus and are committed to changing the landscape and both the

opportunities open to women and the way these are accessed in numerous ways. 

Specifically, we are focused on both entry points to the business for women and an increased female representation in senior roles. Accelerating the initiatives and activities that we have in place and introducing new strategies to strengthen our approach to gender parity will be a key priority for Ricoh UK in the coming years.

As part of these new strategies, we have partnered with Saville Assessment as an early adopter of their new solution Wave-i, which seeks to transform how organisations identify, measure, benchmark and develop potential.  

Key areas of focus to assist closing the gender pay gap are:

Awarding employees in the lower pay quartiles a higher percentage increase than higher pay quartiles during our annual pay review process. Our data shows we currently have a greater proportion of female employees in these roles.
Attracting more females into our sales roles, as our bonus mean pay gap, at 40.19%, shows we currently have more males in our sales commissionable roles.
Celebrating the achievements of our female employees, for example at the Women in Sales Awards (WISA) in 2022 we had two of our female salespeople shortlisted. This allows us to recognise and congratulate a job well done and challenge the idea of what success looks like in a role traditionally held by men, ultimately helping to grow the pipeline of sales talent.

Our initiatives

To fulfil our commitment to sustained change, we recognise we need to progress in a number of different areas to ensure we recruit, promote and develop the best people regardless of who they are. At the same time, we must consciously seek to reduce any barriers which exist to stop our people bringing their whole selves to work.

Our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy has five key focus areas:

Recruiting and Enabling Talent

Working in Partnership

Ways of Working and Policies

Providing Tools and Support

Data and Analysis

Recruiting and Enabling Talent

To attract the best people, we need to ensure that we’re offering inclusive entry points to all levels of our business and that our workforce is reflective and representative of different communities, attitudes and perspectives. 

Example Initiatives:

We ensure that advertising for our job roles is written in neutral language, with all adverts run through a gender language decoder
We design flexibility into key strategic positions to enable females to develop and progress
We advertise as many roles as possible with the option of flexible / hybrid working 
Having two female salespeople shortlisted for the Women in Sales Awards in 2022 will help to raise awareness and grow our sales talent pipeline
We work towards having two identified potential successors for key positions including at least one female

We celebrate International Women's Day and International Men’s Day to create allyship across all employees, and recognise that those in the majority can make change happen
We offer our Emerge development programme and currently 46% of the attendees are females across three cohorts. This covers development areas such as:  
- A chance to explore individual objectives, strengths, weaknesses and personal brand 
- Understand how emotional intelligence, stakeholder management and communication support our goals 
- Support our communities with the Social Value challenge, a chance to give back and implement their skills

We have been running workshops in local schools to help raise awareness of opportunities within STEAM roles which will in the future increase our pipeline of female talent, as well as help other organisations
In 2022 we had one female apprentice complete her programme in April 2022 who went on to secure a permanent role in higher grade. During the period for this narrative, we had a further 7 females on an apprenticeship and are due to complete this in 2024/2025 with the longer term career path towards a professional/senior role in the future. We hope to continue to build on this success by looking to recruit more female apprenticeships each year.
We are also now measuring females in STEAM roles so that we can consider future actions to take.

We are an early adopter of signing the Business in the Community “Opening doors inclusive recruitment campaign” which has enabled us to commit over two years to a wider diverse talent pool at all stages of recruitment.

Three of the initiatives we have committed to are: 

Create partnerships which connect people from excluded groups to our jobs 
Prioritise accessibility and eliminate bias 
Demonstrate your commitment to inclusive recruitment to all stakeholders

Working in Partnership

At Ricoh, diversity and inclusion is part of everything we do, and this extends to who we choose to partner with. By doing so, we can ensure positive change for all of our employees, other organisations and wider society. 

Example initiatives:

We work closely with Business in the Community to benchmark from a gender diversity perspective and support on interventions across all diversity strands 
We are working with our customers in strategic partnerships to drive the diversity and inclusion agenda including The Prince’s Trust & Business in the Community

We continue to be recognised in the FTSE4Good, FTSE Blossom Japan, and the MSCI Japan Empowering Women Indices on a global level which drives diversity and inclusion focuses through all Ricoh operating companies

We have partnered with Saville Assessment as an early adopter of their brand-new solution Wave-i, which seeks to transform how organisations identify, measure, benchmark and develop potential. The model has been tested to remove any negative inferences and so is fair and unbiased. It recognises the nuances of potential and through its dashboard ensures we have a picture of everyone’s strengths, recognising that everyone has potential for something. We now have the data to identify, champion and develop that potential, personalised to each individual manager within the top three layers of the organisation. We also have comparison data for male vs female strengths and weaknesses to develop further learning to enhance these skills.

Ways of Working Policies 

Adopting policies that support the needs of a diverse and inclusive workforce, building agility and flexibility to suit the needs of the individuals and the business. 

Example initiatives:

We have enhanced all of our family friendly policies, including Maternity and Shared Parental Leave to encourage and support both men and women in the workplace. This includes an enhanced benefits package and pay above the statutory minimum requirements for employees on maternity leave. We believe that by offering this, we can provide a better balance for work and family responsibilities for all our employees, helping us attract and retain valued employees, and in doing so create a more engaged workforce
We implemented “Flexible-First policy” which is embedding blended and flexible working practices to enable all employees to have a better work life balance

We have a trans inclusive policy, to support our employees who are looking to transition, have already transitioned, or who are in the process of doing so, which also raises awareness of the trans community with all employees
We are a Living Wage employer and this year we increased 97 employees' pay to the “Real Living Wage” rates of £11.28 per hour which was a 12.8% uplift per hour for these employees. Of those 97 employees, 42 of them were females (43.30%) which is much higher than our overall gender split (27.30% female population) so would have had a positive impact on our gender pay gap for this reporting period. Our focus will be on moving those lower paid employees into the higher paid roles and/or ensuring that they are paid fairly against the external market.

Providing Tools & Support 

Every employee needs to be involved on the journey to achieving greater diversity and inclusivity within the workplace. We’re providing employees with support networks, tools and development programmes to promote fairness and collaboration, and to build a culture of openness. 

Example initiatives:

We have embedded inclusive leadership competencies into our development programmes such as “Emerge” for emerging talent
We have a dedicated Inclusion and Wellbeing Manager role to support efforts to attract and develop a diverse workforce 
We give access and support to our senior female leaders through our European-wide Women’s Leadership Forum where they can share best practice and network, drawing on key skills and talent to encourage personal development. This Forum discusses topics such as career progression, inclusive behaviours and approaches to diversity across Europe

To help drive and support an inclusive culture, we launched our culture programme “Living the Ricoh Way” in March 2022, focusing on inclusive behaviours and enabling employees to ‘call out’ inappropriate behaviour in an open and trusted way  
Our CEO - Glenn Griggs - is our Gender Diversity Champion and helps lead and drive initiatives across the business. Glenn works alongside the other Executive Sponsors for each diversity strand to drive an inclusive culture

Data and Analysis 

Our data is fundamental to understanding what the existing barriers are within the organisation and will also enable us to measure our progress over the coming years.

Example initiatives:

We set five-year targets from April 2018 to increase our gender representation across the business and have seen a 1.85% increase in the overall representation of females
We continue to measure the gender mix throughout the recruitment process to identify any barriers and then put relevant actions in place to address these 
We have developed a diversity dashboard to give us greater visibility and insight to our workforce which will enable us to focus our efforts for change. The results of this are shared each quarter at our board meetings.

We have undertaken detailed analysis as part of our pay review to address any pay disparities
We have analysed how many of our employees who have been promoted are females. 47.62% of all employees promoted were female and 30% of employees promoted to management positions were female. This is very positive particularly when compared to our gender split of 27.30% female and has had an impact on the number of females in the higher pay as outlined in section “Population by pay quartiles”

We analyse our leavers data to identify any trends. For this reporting period, 28.57% of our leavers were from our female population and 5.56% of our female leavers were in senior/leadership roles which will have an impact on our gender pay gap figures. We are happy that we have been part of the journey for these employees which has enabled some of them to progress with their career journey outside of Ricoh. Also, 5% of our male leavers were in Senior roles which will have contributed to the reduction in our gender pay gap

Each year we take part in the Gallup engagement survey and monitor and measure our results to see what initiatives we need to consider, which will go towards helping to address D&I in the workplace and in turn will help towards our gender pay gap results. We have positive results from our Inclusion survey carried out in 2023 which showed that females answered every question more positively than males with questions such as ‘I am treated fairly and with respect regardless of my identity’ and ‘I feel that I would be overlooked for promotional opportunities because of who I am?’

In July 2022, we launched our Menopause Affinity Support Group and currently have nearly 100 members in the group from all genders. The aim of the group is to help normalise the conversations in the workplace which we feel will help to retain key talent of employees who are experiencing symptoms and / or supporting others through this journey.