Our commitment to pay equity and empowering women
Putting people first, and therefore treating people fairly and equitably, is one of our four primary values. We are committed to equal pay for equal work. Pay equity at Shine means that our people receive pay that is fair and consistent when considering the similarity of work, location, scope of skills and tenure at career level. We conduct an annual pay and promotion review in June and a half-year pay and promotion review in December each year. At each of these points, we review our eligible employees to validate pay equity; by doing this we are working systematically to identify gaps and improve pay equity within our career levels by role and location.
Our performance and reward programs and processes are gender-neutral and market-aligned based on impact and demonstrated skills, certifications and other operationally relevant elements (e.g. various levels of security clearances). We believe diversity and inclusion are key to nurturing innovation and creating a culture of parity and equal opportunity for our people. We use various data points to ensure we pay fairly including market data for hiring, performance and promotion review normalisations and pay analysis at the point of pay reviews – this gives us opportunities to address any identified and unexplained gaps in remuneration.
Shine’s WGEA Gender Pay Gap and Organisational Context
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) is an Australian Government statutory agency created to promote and improve gender equality in the workplace. The WGEA has established a gender pay gap reporting approach designed to calculate the overall difference in the median and average earnings between men and women, irrespective of career level, experience, skill diversity, impact and job responsibility. While this is a good headline number to monitor and evaluate, understanding the pay gaps, the pay gap drivers and what we are doing to monitor, identify and resolve them requires a more detailed breakdown.
Using WGEA’s overall approach, Shine’s median gender pay gap for the 12 months ending 31 March 2024 stands at 9.5% for base pay and 9.9% for total remuneration. The mean (average) pay gap is 12.1% for base pay and 21.7% for total remuneration.
Measured against current WGEA published industry benchmarks, the industry median gap is 14.6% for base page and 14.7% for total remuneration, and the mean (average) gap is 11.5% for base pay and 13.5% for total remuneration. Based on this data, Shine is performing better on the median gap than the industry but behind the industry on the mean (average). This outcome only strengthens our focus this year to meaningfully reduce the gender pay gap at career level and role by location, with consideration to our challenges in the technology industry, discussed in the next section.
Gender pay gap drivers
The IT industry generally has a shortage of female candidates, and we find it increasingly more difficult as seniority increases to hire females, or those who identify as female, from the market into available roles. Shine’s gender balance overall is 28% female and 72% male, and our technical balance is 24% female and 76% male.
The main reason behind Shine’s Gender pay gap is the low representation of women at our more senior technical career levels, as the pay gap is not adjusted for any factors that affect pay, such as level of job and responsibility. Over the long term, our strategic approach has been to implement internal programs that support the growth of our female talent. These programs include a mature and flexible hybrid working approach, paid parental leave, purchased leave opportunity, fast-tracking females with potential into leadership roles with formal and internal career support and sponsoring career transitioners from other technical industries to build the Shine and wider industry talent pool. This focus on the growth of female professionals, in the short term, does increase our pay gap due to the concentration of less experienced females in our reportable population.
Other drivers behind Shine’s gap include:
- The time it takes to internally grow female talent on fast-tracked promotion paths into senior technical and leadership roles
- Low representation of females in DevOps positions at all levels. This low representation of female DevOps engineers has a significant impact on the overall gender pay gap as these roles currently attract a market premium in all our locations over traditional Software Engineer roles.
- We have a relatively large contingent of female engineers in lower-paid roles as a result of our university partnerships and career transition programs, which are aimed at building our overall Gender balance and contributing more broadly to the skill shortage in the IT industry.
- Senior Business Development (Sales) roles which attract higher incentives for securing new business, are held exclusively at Shine by male candidates, increasing the average (mean) total remuneration gap.
Action Plan and Strategy To Address the Gap
During the 2024-2025 remuneration review periods, Shine will commit to remuneration parity across the population based on similarity of work, location, impact, scope of skills, and tenure at the career level.
We will validate new salaries from the promotions cycles with new hires, or those not eligible for salary review, to ensure no unexplained gaps exist for next year. We will continue to offer salaries at the point of hire in accordance with our approved salary bands prescribed by the career level to ensure transparency and fairness.
We are continually working toward a 50:50 gender balance, albeit a longer-term strategy, with a focus on women in senior-level positions, both technical and leadership. We are excited by the journey ahead of us and look forward to meaningfully reducing the gender pay gap as our programs aimed at increasing female participation impact over time.
Our people love working at Shine because our ‘people-first’ culture creates a supportive, engaging environment
Parental
Leave
People first, family first. In recognition of changing family structures and dynamics and our support of women in technical and leadership positions, our 12-week paid parental leave is gender-neutral.
We believe our gender-neutral approach allows all parents, without stereotypes, to adjust to balancing family life and a meaningful career. We also provide a supported parental leave returners program, including flexible and part-time options, to ensure that you and your family are supported in the best possible way.
Flexible and
Hybrid Working
Working your way within the parameters of your team and client’s requirements is our everyday way of working. Our people balance work from home, client site, and Shine office attendance as required.
We all have different priorities to juggle alongside our careers, so to ensure that you can be successful and fulfilled in all areas, flexible and hybrid working is keenly supported. We are open to part-time and reduced-hour arrangements.
Lifestyle
Leave
Our lifestyle leave program allows you to purchase up to an additional 4 weeks of leave per year, giving you the flexibility to meet and manage personal commitments or to provide time for important life events and celebrations.
Our people use lifestyle leave for a variety of reasons including spending time with children in school holidays, taking extended overseas trips, celebrating cultural and religious festivals or attending interest-lead education and activities. Our lifestyle leave is designed to give you freedom and balance.
Illuminate – Shine’s Career Transition Program
We don’t just talk about building a gender balance, we invest with purpose. Each year, Shine offers fully funded scholarship places to women motivated to upskill, transition from other industries and build a career in tech.
We are proud to have mentors who provide our scholarship candidates with guidance and support throughout the program. Where possible, we hire these women, and in other circumstances, we aim to give them the skills required to start their new careers.
Learn more here about the scholarships and mentoring program.
Hear from some of our team
Individual video and comments about their career at Shine
Pegah
Software Engineer
Marcela
Senior Software Engineer
Geetha
Senior Business Analyst
Trudi
Managing Consultant
What’s it like working at Shine,
and how do we hire?
You’ll work with good, kind, inspiring and fun people.
Passionate people who really know their tech and love teaming and sharing their knowledge with others.
