JBS&G WGEA Statement

JBS&G Gender Pay Gap Statement 2024-25

During the 2024/25 reporting year, we successfully recruited more female graduates and early career professional and as a result our gender pay gap increased by 3.3% to 17.7%. While this impacts our short-term data, it represents a deliberate investment in building a strong pipeline of future female senior employees and potential leaders.

We are pleased to report continued growth in women’s leadership, with female representation in key leadership roles rising from 25% to 33% and overall leadership representation stable at 37%.

Over the past two reporting periods, JBS&G has strengthened and expanded initiatives to reduce the gender pay gap and foster an inclusive, harassment and discrimination-free workplace. Key actions include but are not limited to:

• Embedding our Equal Employment Opportunity policy and clear complaint reporting and resolution pathways.
• Empowering employees to balance career and carer responsibilities through our industry-leading gender-neutral parental leave and our flexible work practices.
• Strengthening recruitment processes to remove bias and improve gender representation.
• Deepening leadership development, mentoring, and learning programs to support women into senior roles.
• Using active consultation and feedback to keep our initiatives responsive and effective.

Combined, these actions provide a strong foundation for long-term, sustainable progress in closing the gender pay gap and achieving equity across all levels of the organisation.

Organisational context

JBS&G is a professional services environmental consultancy with offices across Australia. We specialise in contaminated land and groundwater remediation, assessments and approvals, ecology, bushfire, corporate affairs, stakeholder engagement, ESG, and digital and creative services.

In 2024–25, JBS&G was benchmarked within the Industry Comparison Group (ICG) Management Advice and Related Consulting Services for organisations with 250–499 employees, a change from the under-250 employee category used in 2023–24. At the time of reporting, JBS&G employed more than 320 people nationally (full time, part time and casual employees) compared with 248 in the previous reporting period.

Our workforce reached gender balance this year, with 50% women and 50% men across the organisation (compared with 46% women and 54% men employed in 2023-24). The gender composition of the ICG in 2024-25 was 46% women and 54% men.

Whilst this year we saw an increase of 3.3% in our GPG (17.7%) from the previous year, we were pleased to see this gap continues to remain below the ICG average of 19.1%. Our ‘All Manager’ GPG score of 10.0% is also lower than the ICG GPG score of 16.6%. This score has not changed from last year but was a significant improvement on the 2022-23 reporting period. In all categories - Board, Senior Managers, Managers and non-managers, JBS&G employs a higher percentage of women when compared with our ICG.

We note our 20-week gender-neutral Parental Leave Policy continues to provide significantly higher than the ICG average of 14.0 weeks leave. We also note this year’s report highlights the continued positive uptake of our gender-neutral Parental Leave Policy - 60% women and 40% men (compared with 0% men in the ICG). The uptake of parental leave for men at JBS&G this year doubled from last year.

These are all further pleasing results.

What we are doing to close the gap

Building on our actions to date, JBS&G continues to focus on:

• Normalising shared caregiving by boosting men’s uptake of gender-neutral parental leave, challenging stereotypes about who should take leave.
• Strengthening workplace culture with respectful workplace training, leadership programs, plus clear behaviour and grievance policies.
• Driving fair recruitment and promotion through gender-neutral advertising, diverse interview panels, and unconscious bias training.
• Championing women’s progression with 44% female mentors plus initiatives including succession planning to open pathways into senior roles.

Future commitments

Our combined focus on leadership representation, flexible work and inclusive policies, ensures we remain confident our long-term strategy will deliver sustainable progress. We are proud of the steps we have taken to date and remain committed to making JBS&G a leader in gender equality within the consulting sector.

We know gender equity requires long-term commitment, so we are acting with purpose. Next, we will focus on:

• Ongoing monitoring of promotions, new appointments and pay structures to maintain fairness.
• Expanding mentoring ‘sponsorship’ and leadership development opportunities for women.
• Guiding improvements through analysis of de-identified, confidential employee survey data.
• Supporting employees affected by family and domestic violence through the development and implementation of a new policy.
• Maintaining our strong senior leadership focus to keep gender equality at the core of how we operate.
• Continuing to promote careers in environmental consulting to women in STEM fields and university groups.