Lidl Ireland Reducing Gender Pay Gaps

In honour of International Women’s Day we are happy to share that we have reduced the gender pay gap in Lidl Ireland by 30% to 6.2% in one year! After an internal report was conducted in 2020, we discovered the gender pay gap in Lidl Ireland was 8.84%. Since then, we have been working hard to narrow this and, in the past year, have reduced the gender pay gap to 6.2%!

The reason for this gap is because we have more males in more senior management positions.
In Lidl Ireland, men make up about 55% and women make up 45% of our team, therefore a small gap does exist of 6.2%. This is significantly lower than the Irish average of 11.3% and the European average of 14.1%.

At Lidl, we endeavour to be transparent, and we are the first retailer in Ireland to produce a report on our gender pay gap ahead of legislation on reporting coming into place in the Republic of Ireland expected later in the year.

The positive change we’re seeing is a result of various programmes and initiatives such as the Leadership Academy, Lupilu Family Leave Programme, menopause supports, compassionate leave policy update and hiring practices to name a few. In addition, we are currently working on a Women in Leadership Mentoring Programme that is set to launch later this year.

Maeve McCleane, Chief People Officer at Lidl Ireland can “personally speak to the real opportunities that exist here for women, having joined Lidl Ireland in 2005 as a District Manager and been guided and mentored on how to take on more senior leadership roles since. I look forward to working with our teams across the business to continue to find new ways to promote gender parity across all levels and we’re committed to maintaining a transparent approach to this process and will continue to share our progress, as we work to close the gap, with both employees and the public.”