People

Our vision is for a world in which gender does not limit anyone’s rights, freedoms or opportunities. 

Therefore, we’re supportive of the Australian Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) releasing gender pay gap (GPG) data to help raise awareness of the systemic factors that contribute to this gap in Australia.

MECCA’s gender pay data

As at 31 March 2024, 82% of our team worked in stores. 97% of those team members working instore were women, and 95% of our Retail leadership team were women. We have no pay gap across our store teams.

The minimum pay rates of Retail team members are set by the Retail Award, and MECCA’s policy is to pay at or above the Award rates. Nonetheless, the average remuneration of Retail team members is lower than the average salary for professional Support Centre team members working in different functions and disciplines, and this has had a significant impact on our GPG data.

For our senior leadership roles (C-Suite, General Manager/ Head of), of which 77% are filled by women, we have a GPG of -6.8% (a pay gap in favour of women).

In a predominately female business, it’s important that we employ men who can offer diversity of experience and also provide allyship in our work towards a more equal future.

Of the 5% of men who work at MECCA, 42% work at our Support Centre and most work in our Technology team (57%). This workforce composition, which is dominated by women employed in stores on pay rates set at least at the Retail Award, and men employed in professional Support Centre roles has resulted in an average (mean) total remuneration gap that was 30% in favour of men.

Clearly, any gap is unacceptable, and our aim is for these numbers to be as close to zero as possible. The most effective ways for us to reduce this gap is to increase the number of women working in our Technology team, and the number of men working in our Retail stores, which we’re working on. As a result, each of these statistics have decreased over the past two years.

We’re proud of the fact that we have a significant number of women working in our Digital and Technology teams in our Support Centre (91% and 37% respectively).

However, as we expanded our investments in digital and technology, both during and post the COVID pandemic, we have found that the local market for technology roles is very competitive and that the candidates for certain roles were almost all men.

Through our Women in DigiTech program, we’re investing in retaining and developing women at MECCA who are working in, or interested in, STEM-related roles, as well as finding ways we can increase the number of women applying for these positions. The program looks to address some of the key systemic challenges women in DigiTech face and set clear standards and goals for MECCA. It aims to educate young girls on potential career pathways in DigiTech and establish employment pathways for female school leavers. It also offers mentoring, coaching and development opportunities to encourage more women leaders in the field.

In addition, through our M-POWER program, we’re working with Skyline Education Foundation, a not-for-profit that supports high-achieving girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to complete secondary school.

In the past year, our female leaders in our Technology team have supported Year 11 and 12 Skyline students with careers in DigiTech sessions and welcomed a Skyline alumni to join our Digital team. We are currently looking at opportunities to bring on additional Skyline alumni in 2025.

As advocates for gender equality, we recognise the importance of financial literacy as a step towards economic independence for women. Through MECCA M-POWER, we are partnering with Scott Pape, a globally respected author of the Barefoot Investor series and expert on financial literacy, to create a suite of education materials and experiences for our entire team. Our aim is to enable them to feel confident and empowered about making financial decisions and managing money.

We want retail to be more than a holiday job – we want our team members to have long and thriving careers at MECCA. Our investment in team member education goes beyond training on products, brands and customer engagement, and includes personal wellbeing, financial literacy, mindfulness and resilience, and diversity and inclusion.

Our Support Centre graduate program is exclusively available to our team members working in stores, the Distribution Centre or Customer Care. In addition, approximately a third of our ~300 Retail leaders started their careers as Store Hosts or Specialists at MECCA, and around 30 store team members have been promoted to roles at Support Centre in the past two years.

In addition to the Graduate Program, we offer four annual cadetships within the MECCAversity team, creating pathways for talented Retail team members without a formal qualification. Cadets gain exposure to design, development, and delivery of education for MECCA team and customers, while gaining experience in an office setting and learning how to manage stakeholders and external brands. After running this program for three years, the majority of Cadets have either progressed into a Support Centre or a field role, while others have taken their learnings back into stores.

Recognising the significant talent and responsibility of Retail leaders across MECCA stores, the ‘MECCA Retail Academy’ has been developed and launched in 2025 to provide business and leadership education, regardless of prior education. Participants attend lectures and apply learnings with Stanford professors, the Barefoot Investor, senior MECCA leaders, and technical experts to empower them to drive results, manage high-performing teams, and lead from within.

As part of ensuring that our practices and policies promote gender equality at MECCA, we comprehensively review data as part of our annual pay review process for all team member groups to ensure that there is no gender difference in the allocation of ratings, bonuses and salary increases.

The GPG is different to equal pay for equal work (women and men being paid the same for performing the same role or different work of equal or comparable value). This has been the law in Australia for many years and MECCA has a range of practices in place to ensure equal pay for equal roles.

The GPG is the difference in average or median earnings between women and men in the workforce.