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Workplace Gender Equity - Employer Statement

As an employer with over 100 employees, Hireup is required by law to undergo gender pay gap reporting according to the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012. 

The reporting involves sharing data about average earnings of women and men in our organisation, the gender composition of our workforce, the flexible working arrangements to our staff, our harassment and discrimination policies, and what we’re doing to address any imbalance. 

At Hireup, our purpose is to enable the pursuit of a good life for everyone - that extends to how we think about inclusion within our workplaces. We’re proud to say that our current median total remuneration gender pay gap has decreased this year to 0.3%. Our total remuneration gender pay gap is 2.2%, compared with the industry average of 4.3%. 

The major contributor to these numbers is our approach to support worker pay. At Hireup, we employ all of our support workers, so their data contributes to our pay gap outcomes. The majority of our workforce is made up of support workers, and like most providers in the disability and care sectors, the majority of them are female. They are also predominantly casual care workers which attract standardised rates across shift types. Hireup support workers are covered by the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) industry award, under the home care stream. We pay above the award wage for shifts over 2 hours, plus allowances for working a broken shift and client transport, as well as higher rates of pay for overtime, work at certain times of day, weekends and public holidays. Recently, we have introduced additional allowances for support workers working with clients who require specialised support. Our employment model is something we are immensely proud of and will continue to invest in as an organisation. 

Hireup's support office team is made up of approximately 300 staff in technology, client and worker enablement and operations roles and it is here we would like to see pay gap numbers improve. Our gender pay gap in the support office is predominantly driven by pay in middle management, and also reflects differing working patterns of our organisation. We value the data and insights that come from this reporting to support us in addressing any gaps that exist in our pay. 

Beyond remuneration, we are pleased to report the other actions we are already taking, and plan to take as an organisation in terms of gender composition, flexible working arrangements, and our harassment and discrimination policies. 

What we are doing to take action on gender inequality:

  • Careers - We support and enable career development across men and women and seniority levels in our organisation. Our succession planning includes a review of our approach to ensure we’re including equal representation of women. These strategies are already working: our Executive Leadership Team is a 50/50 split between men and women, and our general leadership population is ~65/35 Women/Men. 
  • Remuneration - The support office pay structure is informed by external benchmarking tools to create salary ranges, which are used alongside internal benchmarking systems by role, experience and gender. During our cyclical review of remuneration for support office team members, we complete a gender pay gap analysis across levels and functions. Hireup support workers are covered by the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) industry award.
  • Governance - In 2024, Hireup created a Remuneration sub-committee of the board to implement an increased level of governance for remuneration in the organisation, a key focus of this committee in the gender pay gap.
  • Leave - We offer strong flexible working and leave options for our support office, which are visibly utilised by both male and female executive leaders.   
  • Protecting Staff - Hireup is committed to promoting a working environment that is free from unlawful discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment, bullying, vilification, victimisation and adverse action. Behaviour of this kind will not be tolerated under any circumstances and proactive training to support our employees with understanding and meeting these expectations is being implemented. If this behaviour is found to have taken place, swift disciplinary action will be taken against any worker who breaches our policy.
  • Recruitment and Selection - For our support office, our recruitment and selection process aims to be as fair and equitable as possible, ensuring representation of men and women both in terms of candidate pool but also interviewers meeting candidates. Certain roles may be targeted to address imbalance or maintain balance achieved. We also equalise our recruitment processes by assessing candidates by our Hireup Values to ensure we find the right person for the job. All applicants who meet the standard for our Support Workers will be able to work on our platform.
  • Addressing Middle Management - We are taking a specific focus on our middle management layer in the support office through succession planning, career progression, and our development planning approach; coupled with a focus on recruitment and remuneration benchmarking. Reducing the gender pay gap in this segment of our organisation will take some time, but we are committed to its reduction. 
  • Targeted representation - When  we have seen imbalances in specific areas of our organisation in the past, such as in our Product and Technology teams and our Executive Leadership Team, we have targeted these teams to address equal representation. Our approach has garnered positive results, and we intend to continue this approach.  
  • Policies & Practices - We  review our policies and practices annually to ensure they are not only non-discriminatory but truly inclusive.
  • Diversity & Inclusion - We have internal diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging activities available to our staff, as well as employee resources groups to ensure we create an inclusive working environment. 

Overall, while we are mindful there is more to do to completely close the gender pay gap at Hireup, nonetheless we are proud of the continued  progress we have made thus far, and the broader ecosystem of policies and systems we have put in place to make Hireup a great place for women to work.