We're working hard to close the pay gap


BHP

We’re working hard to close the gender pay gap at BHP, which is currently approximately five per cent for base salaries on a like-for-like role basis. 

Providing equal pay for equal work is one of the ways we can support inclusion and diversity and achieve our aspirational goal of gender balance by 2025.

Over the last three years, we have given 2,300 female employees a total of US$7.7 million in pay adjustments to rectify identified pay variances. This included US$3.3 million spent on pay adjustments in FY2019 for 1,200 female employees and US$4 million on pay adjustments in FY2018 for 1,000 females across the globe.

Although we still have work to do to close the gap, here’s some of the improvements we have made so far:

Removing barriers that prevent us from closing the pay gap:

  • Eliminating conscious and unconscious bias in the external hiring process via a ‘blind reward’ approach. Instead of asking for candidate’s current salary or salary expectations at the beginning of the hiring process, candidates are offered a competitive salary based on the role during contract discussions, with the aim of ensuring gaps are not created at the time men and women commence work with BHP;
  • Employees who receive a salary increase, or commence in a new role, post 1 April in any year, will still remain eligible for a salary review as part of the Annual Reward Review process;
  • Supporting our leaders through a regular and rigorous process to identify gender pay issues; and
  • Empowering leaders to address gender pay issues and make pay corrections through the Gender Pay Equity Review process during the Annual Reward Review, without those decisions impacting team salary budgets.

Transparency and reporting

  • Our Board and Remuneration Committee review our remuneration by gender each year;
  • We provide regular updates to our Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and the global Inclusion and Diversity Council; and
  • We support transparent external reporting and we meet a number of different disclosure requirements around the world, including voluntary reporting under the UK Gender Gap Reporting and in our annual Sustainability Report, together with reporting in Australia under Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) requirements.

How do we measure our pay gap?

We look at two key aspects: the overall gender pay gap (the difference between the average base salary of men and women at BHP globally), and the like-for-like role pay gap (the difference between a female and a male’s salary who do similar roles in similar locations).

Average base salaries are influenced by many different factors, including the talent markets in each geography, the pay rates and cost of living in different locations, and our gender representation at different job types and levels of seniority, so the like-for-like role comparison is the more useful way for us to target our efforts for our gender pay gap review.

However, while that is a specific process, we must also continue to tackle the systemic and societal issues that exist, and our overall gender pay gap will only truly be solved when we have a fair representation of men and women in all locations, levels of seniority and role types.

What’s next?

We know we have much more work to do to close our overall pay gap and as our pay gap review continues to evolve, we will continue transparency of the process and outcomes for all employees.

Beyond this, we need to keep working to address the systemic issues behind the gender pay gap. This includes the ongoing roll out of blind reward recruiting, and further education for our leaders to help mitigate potential bias in selection, salary reviews and promotion decisions. We will also continue to look for opportunities to improve other reward offerings where they could potentially contribute to a pay or benefits gap.