French multinational financial services firm Societe Generale has invested €100 million euros (£865.4 million) into a plan to try to close its gender pay gap.
The firm, which employs 117,000 workers in 66 countries, will use the funds to boost remuneration of its female employees over the next two years. The investment amounts to less than 1% of its roughly €10 billion (£86.5 million) total wage bill.
Societe Generale’s 2022 UK gender pay gap report, which covers employees at its London and international business, revealed that the median pay gap for hourly pay was 26.2%, higher than the average UK employer but less than the 30.1% average across 20 other large finance firms.
The group will introduce simplified and clear reporting principles regarding its gender pay gaps, including a focus on reported income as a fair representation of performance for both reporting and distribution, normative return based on a 12% capital allocation, an increased allocation of corporate centre and transformation costs to businesses, and data-based incentives with higher weight of cost and profitability targets.
The organisation will also further strengthen its aim of gender diversity by targeting more than 35% of women in senior leadership roles by 2026, and is committed to being a responsible employer of choice by embedding a performance and accountability focused culture and increasing its employee engagement score. To foster an ownership mindset, Societe Generale will additionally launch an annual employee share scheme aligning employee and shareholder interests.
Societe Generale was contacted for comment prior to publication.