QBE Australia’s 2022-2023 Gender Pay Gap

We support the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA’s) publication of gender pay gaps as a transparent measure of progress.

There are many factors that contribute to the gender pay gap and for the 2022-2023 reporting period, QBE Australia’s median pay gap was 24% for base salary and 25.7% for total remuneration.

Chief Executive Officer, Australia Pacific, Sue Houghton said:

“We maintain a commitment to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment which promotes and enables gender-equality across our workforce. Our 2022-2023 gender pay gap is an important measure and tells us we have more to do to address this gap.

“We recognise that the gender pay gap is driven by a range of factors that cannot be addressed with salary adjustments alone, it requires a multi-faceted approach and a sustained commitment to change.”

Actions to drive change

Closing the gender pay gap requires a combined focus on equal pay alongside targeted initiatives that drive change and measure progress. While we recognise there is more to do, our ongoing focus areas include:

• Annual review of like-for-like roles to address and eliminate gender-related pay disparities.
• Leadership development and succession planning to foster an internal pipeline of female leaders, alongside a focus on increasing the representation of men in non-leadership roles. We’ve met our global target of 40% women in leadership, and in Australia and New Zealand we have 41.5% women in leadership as of December 2023.
• Challenging gender stereotypes through our best practice, gender inclusive paid parental leave policy, Share the Care, which has increased the representation of men taking parental leave from 10% of all carers to nearly 40%.
• Supporting a family-friendly workplace through our policies, support pathways and flexible work practices, to ensure the continued participation and retention of women in our workforce.
• Embedding the 40:40:20 principle (which is a balance of 40% female, 40% male and 20% any gender) into our recruitment and promotion processes.

About the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is a measure of the difference in earnings for men and women. Gender pay gap data is useful for understanding how we are progressing year on year, and it also helps us understand the impact our ongoing efforts have in attracting, retaining and advancing women.

Pay gap is different to pay equity, which focuses on equal or like-for-like pay for the same or comparable roles. Pay equity is about the individual role, whereas pay gap looks at the pay difference across all roles in the organisation. At QBE we review pay equity as part of the annual merit review process and at various stages through an employee’s journey, including at the time of recruitment, promotion and job change.