Coca‑Cola South Pacific 2022 - 2023 Gender Equality Reporting
Employer Statement
Introduction
At Coca‑Cola, we are focused on creating a better shared future. We invest to improve people’s lives, from our employees to those who touch our business system, to the many communities we, our bottlers and our partners call home. This includes prioritising, building, and fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace.
In Australia and around the world, diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the heart of our company’s values and growth strategy. We aspire to create a workforce that reflects the markets we serve.
Employers with 100 or more employees in Australia are required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency every year specific information relating to six Gender Equality Indicators. Such information includes, but is not limited to, workforce composition and gender pay gap data, and relevant policies related to gender equity.
As well as meeting our obligations as an employer, this is an important way for us to measure our progress and hold ourselves to account, where necessary, to ensure we meet our ambition of gender equality at work.
Equal representation of genders across the workforce is integral to our goal of embedding diversity, equity and inclusion in all our workplaces globally. The Coca‑Cola Company’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy includes three long-term ambitions:
1. We aspire for our diverse workforce to mirror the markets we serve.
2. We advance equity within our business, communities, and the marketplace.
3. We enable an inclusive culture where our employees can thrive.
This document presents our first year of Gender Pay Gap reporting for Coca‑Cola South Pacific Pty Ltd. It outlines how we are performing as a business on this important measure, as well as where we can improve.
About the Gender Pay Gap
The Gender Pay Gap is the difference between the average hourly pay earned by men and women. It consists of salary, bonuses, and any other financial benefits related to an individual’s employment.
It is not the same as pay equity, which is where men and women receive equal pay for work of equal or comparable value.
At Coca‑Cola, we are committed to paying our employees fairly and equitably for the work that they do. Pay Equity is built into our entire Total Rewards process, including salary reviews, promotions, and bonus payments. We also commission regular Pay Equity reviews by independent third parties so that any imbalances can be quickly identified and addressed.
Our business in Australia
Coca‑Cola South Pacific is home to a diverse workforce with employees representing a wide range of functions. We operate under a networked structure in which employees report on a functional basis. The majority of employees in Australia provide marketing and technical support to Australia and the ASEAN & South Pacific Operating Unit, headquartered in Singapore. Our structure and workforce composition varies significantly across the 10 countries in the operating unit where we have employees. The remainder of the employees in Australia hold roles with an APAC or global remit.
Coca‑Cola South Pacific employed 109 employees as of 1 April 2023, 41% male and 59% female.
Understanding Our Gender Pay Gap in relation to the WGEA model
Our 2022-2023 gender pay gap results show that we have an average overall gender pay gap of 11.4% and a median of 25.6%.
There are three contributing factors that affect our employee's total remuneration and can therefore have an influence on our Gender Pay Gap.
1. Pay equity – we are committed to paying our employees fairly and equitably for equivalent levels of work. Our global team conducts annual audits to ensure our employees are paid equitably. As part of our process, we also engage independent, third-party experts to conduct pay equity reviews annually. These experts analyse compensation of employees performing similar work, or holding similar roles to identify and address any disparities that may exist and ensure that all employees are paid fairly and equitably for comparable work, regardless of their gender. Any discrepancies are flagged and corrective actions are taken.
2. Senior leadership – the balance of women and men in senior leadership roles is also a key driver of overall remuneration, both in terms of base pay and the opportunity for annual incentive, or bonus. Globally, we aspire to be 50% led by women by 2030; we have a number of initiatives underway to support this aspiration. We are making progress through our recruitment and promotion policies, our talent management processes, as well as our dedicated people leader training.
3. Annual incentives, or bonuses – we pay our employees an annual incentive that is awarded based on both business and individual performance with a structure designed to grow with increasing levels of seniority within the organization. Our robust and structured performance differentiation process goes through a series of reviews prior to it being finalised, with our regional leadership team reviewing this across all functions and levels.
Most of our Gender Pay Gap can be attributed to a disparity between the total remuneration of men and women, which covers all remuneration paid to an employee, including base salary, superannuation and bonuses. As noted above, seniority has a significant influence on base pay and on employee’s annual incentive opportunity.
While in Australia we have a higher proportion of women in our workforce than men (59% women v 41% men), we also have more women than men in lower quartile roles which is a key factor. Even though our workforce has a majority of women in every quartile, the upper quartile does show a 12% disparity.
We are committed to bringing in and developing more women in the organisation and increasing the number of opportunities available for progression, creating a more inclusive organisation across all pay levels. Outlined below are the initiatives in place to help us achieve this.
Delivering change through practical actions
The Coca‑Cola Company is committed to Gender Balance and Pay Equity. Within our ASEAN & South Pacific Operating Unit we aim to improve our female leadership and the representation of females in senior roles across the region as part of our global aspiration to be 50% led by women globally. Various initiatives to help us achieve this include:
(a) The Coca‑Cola Company's Global Women’s Leadership Council, which aims to accelerate the development and movement of female talent into roles of increasing responsibility and influence and introduced an international sponsorship program for female leaders.
(b) Our employee-led Gender Balance Inclusion Networks that focuses on creating an inclusive workplace culture through the lens of DEI, consistent with our global DEI strategy, with a focus on financial education and wellbeing in 2024.
(c) Our recruitment strategies through which we ensure gender balance in our candidate pools and candidate shortlists and gender diverse interview panel.
(d) Our promotion strategies ensure gender balance through a quarterly cadence to drive key decisions for Talent: proactive review and tracking of talent to be developed and accelerated, Leadership team review of individual progress of development plans and a freshly revamped standardized and transparent Career and Pay Framework.
(e) Annually externally publishing representation data by gender for The Coca‑Cola Company's overall workforce and leadership.
(f) Our flexible working practices which currently includes fully paid parental leave of 12 weeks including superannuation payments during this period.
The Coca‑Cola Company’s Board (global governance)
We are proud to have a Board of Directors that is governed equally between men and women. This is 23% higher than comparable organisations in our industry.
We believe that having a balanced and diverse board is not only necessary for good business, but also highlights our commitment to, and recognition of, the importance of women in senior leadership positions.
Robert Priest
Director
Coca‑Cola South Pacific Pty. Ltd.