Housing association Platform Housing Group aims to narrow or close its gender pay gap through the use of flexible working for employees.
The group has 2,000 employees ranging from property maintenance to corporate workers and operates from the Derbyshire Dales area, down to Oxfordshire.
Its 2024 gender pay gap report, published in April 2025, revealed a –3.08% mean gender pay gap, down from -4.2% in 2023, and a –1.64% median gender pay gap, down from -3.2% in 2023, with both in favour of women.
It found that it attracts a lot of women who are normally excluded from the labour market due to caring responsibilities because of its flexible-working arrangements. This varies across departments depending on the nature of employees’ roles, but it aims to have a transparent approach to the arrangements, enabling staff to work in a way that best suits them.
This benefit is useful for a multitude of reasons, says Tom Piotrowski, diversity and inclusion advisor.
“With this, I think we are well ahead of time and legislation,” he says. ”We anticipated the legislative agenda on flexibility changing two to three years before it became obvious that it was heading our way as part of the employment law reform.”
Platform Housing Group views career progression as important to narrow the gender pay gap and offers fully remote roles for carers to assist with this. As a result, its executive and senior leadership teams are predominantly women, because they have been able to progress to a senior role or return to work after having children.
Jason Price, head of reward and performance, explains that the group prioritises pay transparency, how pay ranges and structures are set and benchmarking roles. It regularly reviews these, as well as focusing on clear career pathways.
“In terms of people’s progression, the training we offer is open to all employees and is flexible in how it can be accessed,” he says. ”There’s lots of self-directed learning and training enabling staff who can’t attend face-to-face sessions to do it at home instead, so they can still progress in terms of opportunities and qualifications.”
The group also has a proactive approach to its health and wellbeing benefits and regularly reviews these to ensure they are helpful and keep employees in work, regardless of their gender.
Its health cash plan can be accessed by all employees from day one of their employment, and includes optical, dental and podiatry support, among others. It also includes an employee assistance programme for mental health and counselling support, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Accessed through an app, employees can add family members and children up until the age of 24 to it for free. The plan is monitored to see which support staff use, how it is accessed and if it is still fit for purpose.
The organisation worked on its menopause in the workplace policy extensively in 2025 to ensure those affected do not have to leave the workplace or lose out if they reduce their hours. This includes a menopause affinity group, supportive resources and ad-hoc arrangements.
“We are working towards menopause accreditation, encouraging managers to undertake training, and have advocates across the business,” says Price. ”We also have advocates for men’s health.”
Platform Housing Group believes it is important to narrow and close its gender pay gap due to its aim of being perceived as an employer that gives people equal opportunities not just to join the business, but also in terms of growing talent and enabling them to progress.
“We’ve recently replaced our recruitment system to one that enabled us to do more with data on how we attract people into roles and where we have drop offs during the recruitment process. A lot of our processes are built with equality in mind, we anonymise all the application forms,” Price says.
