A message from Scott Criddle, Group Vice President, UK Country Lead and EMEA Capacity Lead, Publicis Sapient U.K.
At Publicis Sapient, we are committed to creating a workplace where people of all genders are valued, respected and able to thrive. This commitment matters at all times, but it is particularly important in periods of sustained disruption and transformation, when economic uncertainty, rapid technological changes like AI and evolving ways of working can unintentionally reinforce existing inequalities if they are not actively addressed.
As a People + Product company, we also understand that the digital and engineering sector still has fewer women in senior positions.
Against this backdrop, strengthening representation at these levels remains a core priority for us and is essential to driving innovation, enhancing people experience, and better serving our clients and communities.
In recent years, we have strengthened our focus on gender equity through targeted, data-informed action. Our UK Gender Equity Plan, supported by a multidisciplinary Gender Taskforce and our renewed PS Balance employee network, is designed to embed accountability, support progression at critical career stages and ensure that inclusion remains central to our transformation agenda.
This Gender Pay Gap Report has been prepared in line with UK Government reporting requirements and presents our gender pay and bonus gap data for the 2025 reporting year, including median and mean differences in hourly and bonus pay, as well as gender distribution across pay quartiles. Alongside the figures, we provide context on the factors influencing our results and the actions we are taking to drive sustainable progress. We see this transparency as a critical part of building trust and learning where further focus is required.
This year’s gender pay gap results reflect the combined impact of workforce composition, progression patterns, and ongoing efforts to strengthen gender equity across the organisation. The data provides insight into how representation across functions, career stages, and seniority levels continues to influence overall pay outcomes.
It is important to note that gender pay gap reporting provides a snapshot in time. Changes in mean and median gaps can be influenced by relatively small movements in senior populations, hiring patterns or reorganizations. Reviewing trends over time, alongside qualitative insight, enables a more accurate understanding of progress and priorities.
Below are our median and mean pay gaps, bonus gaps, and pay quartile outcomes, prepared in line with government reporting guidance.
Compared with the previous year, our 2025 results show a reduction in both the mean and median gender pay gap. This improvement reflects a combination of drivers:
Gender Equity Plan – UK
Our UK Gender Equity Plan provides the framework for how we monitor, understand and address gender-related pay and progression outcomes. During the year, we enhanced our approach to analysis, enabling more frequent and granular review across the organisation.
Our analysis includes:
To complement this quantitative analysis, we hold regular gender huddles to hear directly from women across different career stages about their lived experiences. These small-group sessions are anonymised to support psychological safety and provide insight into how organisational change, hybrid working and career transitions are experienced in practice.
This quantitative and qualitative approach enables us to understand not only whether change is happening, but what is driving it and where further action is required.
Mid and Senior Roles Hiring Pipeline Reviews
We will be reviewing our hiring pipelines to ensure gender balance is sustained beyond junior roles, with a particular focus on mid and senior-level recruitment. This includes analysing candidate flow at each stage of the recruitment process to understand where representation drops off. We also partner with identity-based organisations to support recruitment into specialist technology and engineering roles.
Our focus includes:
Targeted Sponsorship for Women
To address progression slowdowns that typically occur at mid and senior career stages, we are expanding our sponsorship approach for women. The sponsorship is designed to deliver measurable progression outcomes, including:
Our PS Balance community network plays an active role in shaping this work by contributing lived-experience insights. A sub-group of PS Balance, Menopause at Work, also provides additional insight into factors affecting retention and progression.
We also continue to consult our external inclusion partners such as Catalyst to keep our plans grounded and provide advisory support to progress it.
As we continue to navigate rapid technological change, including the accelerating impact of AI and automation, we are focused on ensuring that gender equity is embedded into workforce planning, skills development and role design.
Looking ahead, our priorities include:
We recognise that closing the gender pay gap is an ongoing journey. We remain committed to monitoring our progress, maintaining transparency, and taking proportionate steps to support greater gender equity across our workforce.
Q: What is the gender pay gap?
A: The gender pay gap is the difference in average and median hourly earnings between men and women. This is calculated by looking at all employees’ salaries across an organisation, regardless of their job role or level. Gender pay gap reporting was introduced in April 2017 for organisations with more than 250 employees at the snapshot date (5 April each year).
Q: Does a gender pay gap mean an equal pay issue?
A: No. Gender pay is different to equal pay which is defined as “the right for men and women to be paid the same when doing the same, or equivalent, work”. It is illegal to pay people differently for the same or equivalent work because of their gender and has been since the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970.
Q: Why do we have a gender pay gap?
A: A gender pay gap can be caused by several factors such as having more men than women in high earning roles or more women working part-time.
Q: What is the reporting period?
A: The salary data is based on a snapshot of payroll taken on 5 April 2025. Bonus data covers the 12 months preceding that date.
Q: Which employees are included in this report?
A: The figures cover all employees who have a permanent or fixed-term contract (full or part-time) and are paid through our payroll system. The data does not cover employees who are being paid a reduced rate or not being paid due to being on maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental leave or an unpaid sabbatical, for example.
Q: How have you calculated bonus payments?
A: Bonus calculations include the performance bonus for those eligible and other commission bonus payouts.
Q: What is the median pay gap?
A: This is calculated by listing all employees’ hourly pay from highest to lowest, and then comparing the midpoint (the numbers that fall in the middle) for men with the midpoint for women. The difference between the two is the median pay gap, shown as a percentage.
Q: What is the mean pay gap?
A: This is calculated by adding up all employees’ hourly pay and dividing it by the number of employees. The pay gap is the difference between the mean (average) figures for men and for women, which is reported as a percentage.
Q: What is the bonus gap?
A: The mean and median bonus gaps are the difference between the mean and median bonus pay received by male and female employees in the 12 months ending on 5 April 2025. This applies to all employees, even if they’re not in full pay on the snapshot date. We also report on the percentage of male and female employees that receive a bonus in the year.
Q: What is a pay quartile?
A: Employers must sort their full pay employees into a list based on hourly pay, in highest to lowest order, and then split this list into four equal parts which shows how many men and women fall into each of the pay quartiles.