CDL recognise that diversity brings together people with a broad range of experiences, perspectives and approaches. This supports greater innovation for our organisation and enables each of us to better understand and support our colleagues, our business partners and our customers. Diversity in all forms is not just ethically the right thing to do, it is proven that diversity is good for business. We are passionate about equality and are committed to take actions to reduce any pay gaps, ensuring at all times our policies and practices are fair and non-discriminatory.

Studies show that IT traditionally suffers with low attraction rates of females (in STEM subjects) from school through to industry. In turn, this influences the number of females that seek and obtain technology roles with us and, over time, the number of females that seek and obtain senior positions.

We have been working hard to achieve a long-term gender equal workforce. CDL is committed to collaborating with local government and the education sector. We are actively involved in supporting women in technology initiatives for the region and support local school projects to encourage females to consider undertaking studies and future careers geared towards technology positions in the market. We also work with colleges and digital communities to promote technology as a positive career choice. We are members of Employer forums such as Digital Skills who take positive steps to promote women in Technology.

The following data shows our overall gender split based on a snapshot as at April 2021.
	Female	Male
Percentage of Employees	25%	75%

The following information provides overall mean and median gender pay data at April 2021
	Mean	Median
Hourly Pay	11.22%	4.59%
We note our pay gap mean and median compares favourably to the industry average of 25%. We recognise that we still have work to do improve the gap and we set the same salary levels for men and women in the same or equivalent roles.

	Mean	Median
Bonus	100%	100%
Currently, bonuses are only given to those who have reached the top of our banding structure, which only effect the Executive Team. As we have no women on the Executive Team, we note there is a gap in bonus here.

Percentage of Employees	0%	1%

Total distribution of male and female employees broken down in hourly pay quartiles
Upper Quartile	19%	81%
Upper-Middle Quartile	27%	73%
Lower-Middle Quartile	25%	75%
Lower Quartile	28%	72%
The Technology industry typically attracts far more male applicants, and this flows through to show a general male bias. The gender gap in the North’s digital technology sector is continuing to widen, with workforces split 80:20 male to female, compared with a 72:28 in previous years, according to the results of Manchester Digital's annual digital skills audit.

We declare that our data has been calculated according to the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.