Inverclyde Leisure

Inverclyde Leisure is a charitable leisure trust, based in the Waterfront Leisure Complex in Greenock, Inverclyde.

“We run a mixture of facilities in the west of Scotland,” says Kieron Vango, CEO of Inverclyde Leisure, “from gyms and swimming pools to parks and pitches. We have around 170 full time employees, with around 300 overall, including aerobics instructors and swimming teachers, among other similar positions.”

Kieron first became aware of the Gender Pay Gap Report through his regular Croner consultant, Natalie O’Hare. “Natalie comes in every quarter and updates us on new legislation or updates to policy, and we take on that advice. It was through her that we sought Croner’s help with our Gender Pay Reporting. We discussed the report in detail, particularly whether we were eligible or not, as we are right on the cusp of eligibility for reporting.

“It wasn’t something we wanted to commit days and days’ worth of resources to,” says Audrey Lavelle, Finance Manager, “because of the business size, and the fact we were working with the time and attendance system at the time, a lot was coming at us at once. To us, it was just good value to get it done and outsource it.”

Audrey agreed to utilise Croner’s Gender Pay Reporting service, and completed the simple steps required to obtain the report. “I got a call from someone in the Reward department, and they sent over a proposal. We had the choice between a one or three year proposal, we decided to go for the three year. They gave us a spreadsheet to fill out, we populated the spreadsheet with our information, sent it back, and then within 24 hours we had the file back with the draft report.

“Once that was done we had a conference call to go through a few of the main points of the report, and had a brief discussion on whether we should comment on the report when we published it. For example, we had a pay gap on bonus, but technically it was a long-service award, so we wanted to know if we should put a note on that, especially as the policy was about to cease.”

“The advice was great. The report was explained thoroughly, and as well as what we could do in terms of updating our own website, we received information on what was required for the government portal.”

Kieron is glad to have Croner’s support in preparation for next year’s report. “As we look at approaching the next year of Gender Pay Gap Reporting, we’ll open up a dialogue again with the consultants. It’s good to know that the service is there if and when we require it. Thankfully we’ve not needed to utilise it much, as our report confirmed that we were well below the national average, so we were in good shape as far as our Gender Pay Gap was concerned—no alarm bells were ringing.

“The report we requested was fairly standard, in our sector you get a range of different contracts- some are casual and some are not, plus there is a large range of different roles, so there was some complexity there.

“We were absolutely satisfied with the finished result, I’d 100% recommend using Croner for their Gender Pay Reporting services.”