HR gender pay gap widest for pay specialists

Women working in human resources continue to earn less than men in almost every specialist area of work, CELRE's 2008/09 Salary Survey of HR/Personnel Staff.

Across all HR functions, the median basic salary plus bonus paid to women is just 83.5% of that paid to men.

The gap is almost at its widest among pay specialists, with women in reward management earning just 75% as much as men. Only women in employee relations and management development fare worse relative to their male counterparts (see table and chart 1).

The findings are based on pay data collected by CELRE from 94 companies covering 6,764 people working in HR/personnel functions, and analysed using the CELRE online JobPricing tool available to subscribers.

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Despite the gap, there are signs of improvement. A similar analysis from the CELRE salary survey of the personnel function in 2000 found that women in HR earned just 72.2% as much as men.

The pay gap is also wider between HR practitioners in different specialisms than between men and women in the same specialist area (see chart 2).

Even excluding those working in HR administrative roles and in payroll or pensions administration, it is clear that practitioners specialising in management development or working as business partners are considerably better paid than those in most other areas.

Compared with other specialist HR practitioners, reward managers fare fairly well, with a median salary plus bonus of just over £45,000.

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