Gender Pay Report: 2025
Riverdale Healthcare is the trading name of Riverdale Tradeco Limited. Registered Office: 13 Roseberry Court, Ellerbeck Way, Stokesley, Middlesbrough, TS9 5QT (Registered in England & Wales No. 11506562).
We are a group of independent dental practices located across England.
Following the establishment of the Group in December 2018, we have acquired 62 practices and a dental laboratory to date.
As a group we have focused on developing our people processes and policies as well as integrating our practices to maximise revenue opportunities. This activity has included the introduction of a pay structure which we are developing year on year to offer career pathway and to address pay inequalities in our acquired practices.
The benefit of this will continue to be visible in our future reports.
OUR MISSION
DENTISTRY FOR EVERYONE, WITH A PASSION FOR IMPROVING LIVES
OUR VISION
TO BE THE MOST TRUSTED PROVIDER, TRANSFORMING DENTAL CARE FOR THE NATION
Our Values and Behaviours
Our company values play an important role in our day-to-day operation and we empower all of our team members to demonstrate them regardless of the role they occupy. Everyone can make a difference – even if that difference affects one person. Our Values represent how we would want to be treated throughout our journey with Riverdale.
Do the right thing.
Be the best we can be.
Support each other.
What is the Gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average (mean or median) earnings of men and women across a workforce. Since 2017, employers with a headcount of 250 or more must comply with regulations on gender pay gap reporting.
This requires employers to annually report and publish specific data about their gender pay gap from the defined snapshot date which is the 5th of April.
Gender Split
At the snapshot date, we had 568 employed colleagues (which excludes maternity, long-term sickness/sickness and unpaid leave as per the Gender Pay Gap guidance) with an overall gender split
of 92% female and 8% male.
OUR COMMITMENT TO EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
At Riverdale Healthcare, we take our commitment to diversity and equality seriously. We want to employ, attract and reward the best people, irrespective of gender, age, race, background, sexuality or any other factors by:
Our published gender pay report reflects the fact that most of our dental practices (which typically pay lower hourly rates), employ more women. We aim to be supportive, caring and have an inclusive environment for everyone that works and visits our Support Office and Practices. We are committed to working towards equality and to create a culture where the diversity, and dignity of our team members and patients are respected and valued by all.
We constantly review our policies and procedures and implement appropriate actions to help make positive changes where required, and we are determined to continue improving the diversity of our workforce at all levels to properly reflect the culture of our business.
2025: Gender Pay Gap Data
We have a mean Gender Pay Gap of 50.91% and a median Gender Pay Gap of 38.10% for 2025 (snapshot date).
We recognise that while we employ both men and women in the organisation, men tend to be employed in more technical specialist or director roles, which attract higher pay. We have significantly fewer men in lower-paid roles, which are typically within our dental practices.
In 2025, our gender pay gap worsened by 9 pence compared to the previous year, due to higher male salaries in the SLT and Exec teams. During the same period, the median reduced by 13 pence, largely due to the expansion of our apprenticeship programme and growth in entry-level opportunities.
As an organisation, we remain committed to doing the right thing by creating fair opportunities for progression, supporting each other’s development, and continuing to build a balanced and inclusive workforce.
Proportion of Women vs Men in each Pay Quartile
The following shows that women are the largest group of employees in all quartiles of pay, and 96% of colleagues in our second highest earning quartile are women. Men have mainly joined the company within the upper and upper middle categories.
Women are more likely to work at our practices, which typically attract lower hourly rates, however women are very well represented at 80% in the highest earning quartile.
2025 Bonus Data
In the 12-month period to April 2025 (snapshot date), 84% of female colleagues and 26% of male colleagues received a bonus.
Our mean bonus gender pay gap is 32.82%, meaning that on average women received 32.82% less in bonus pay than men (67p for every £1). However, the median bonus gap is -15.03%, meaning that at the midpoint women received 15% more than men (£1.15 for every £1).
The difference between the mean and median reflects how bonus payments are distributed across the organisation. The mean can be significantly influenced by a small number of higher bonus payments, whereas the median provides a view of the typical bonus received. The higher proportion of women receiving bonuses demonstrates broad participation in our bonus schemes, while the variation between mean and median indicates differences in bonus values at different levels of the organisation.
In line with our values, we are committed to ensuring our reward processes are fair, transparent and consistently applied. We will continue to review our bonus structures to promote equity and opportunity for all colleagues.
Why a Gender Pay Gap Exists at Riverdale
As with other organisations in the dental sector, we continue to carry a larger gap than we would like between the pay of men and women. Within the industry, the roles within practices typically attract more women than men i.e. dental nurses and receptionists which are lower-paid roles.
We recognise creating a better gender balance among the group is important, which is a longer-term challenge.
We employ both men and women in our central functions, providing executive, managerial, and specialist technical skills such as marketing, finance, HR and clinical, etc. Our demographics demonstrate we have more men in these roles who are typically higher paid, particular within the Executive team where our biggest Gender Pay Gap exists.
The majority of our practice employees are women, where we do not have a gender pay gap. We have also expanded our Apprenticeship programmes to include reception, Oral Health Practitioner, Dental Practice Manager to support early careers and ongoing development, which will offer higher pay.
Workforce Demographics
In April 2025 (the snapshot date), we had 568 employees (which excludes maternity, long-term sickness/sickness and unpaid leave as per the Gender Pay Gap guidance), with an overall split of 92% female and 8% male.
- At the time of reporting, approximately 3.5% of our colleagues are male, with the majority working in our Support Office.
- Within our practices, approximately 4.5% are male colleagues.
- Approximately 5.4% of our colleagues are female working within our Support Office.
- We employ approximately 86.6% of our colleagues within our practices, which attract a higher proportion of women to these roles.
- We continue to offer part-time and flexible working to support our colleagues, as well as remote and hybrid working arrangements. We believe flexible working is important to our colleagues, and we do our best to accommodate this.
What Have We Done In The Last Year
Further enhanced our nurse career pathway with a differential above national living wage, clear progression routes and opportunities.
- Introduced additional Nurse levels to support specialisms and offer progression, such as Specialist Nurses in Orthodontics, Implantology, Senior Nurse and Regional.
- We have introduced a Dental Reception Apprenticeship to support our pipeline and offer a qualification for entry level roles.
- In the 12 months to April 2025 (snapshot date), we have internally promoted over 101 colleagues, of which 92 are female, and 9 are male. Women are represented at the Executive level, which includes the Chief People Officer and Chief Operations Officer. In Operations, we have 6 Senior female leaders and in HR 2.
- We continue to highlight and evaluate gender pay when making salary decisions.
- Reviewed our adverts and campaigns and implemented changes to maximise ED&I effectiveness.
- We introduced employee recognition schemes such as Long Service and Value Awards.
Our Commitment to Improve our Gender Pay Gap
At Riverdale, we are committed to doing the right thing by creating fair and equitable opportunities across our organisation. While structural factors within the dental sector influence our gender pay gap, we are taking clear steps to understand and reduce it over time.
Guided by our vision and values: Do the Right Thing, Be the Best We Can Be, and Support Each Other, we review our gender pay data annually and take action where needed to ensure an inclusive and supportive working environment.
Recruitment:
We will continue to work to address the gender pay gap and what best supports the needs of gender differences in our business, to ensure equitable employment and opportunities, by continuing to promote inclusive recruitment practices across all roles and encourage internal career progression across clinical and operational roles.
Career Development:
We are consistently promoting within practices, supported by our career pathway, by promoting leadership development opportunities to all staff, supporting mentoring and progression conversations through annual reviews, and identifying and supporting through talent mapping our future leaders across the organisation. We are committed to encourage and facilitate career progression via internal applications for operational and central support roles.
Pay fairness and transparency:
Nurse pay has been increased at a higher percentage compared to our support and operational teams. As our Nurse Cohort is predominantly women, we will continue to see the benefits of these initiatives. We will continue to assess gender impact when making salary, recruitment and promotion decisions, maintain structured pay review processes and continue annual gender pay gap analysis and senior leadership review.
Flexible and supportive working:
We constantly look at ways to support our colleagues across the business by supporting flexible working arrangements where operationally possible, encouraging supportive return-to-work discussions following family leave or extended absence and promoting wellbeing initiatives.
We are committed to reviewing the above annually as part of our workforce planning and people strategy to ensure we continue to support fairness, opportunity, and inclusion across Riverdale Healthcare.
Download the full report:
To view our full Gender Pay Gap Report 2025, please download our PDF for further details.
