At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. Our recent year-end report looked back at what defined our community in Ireland in 2022 and highlighted our diverse community of creators.

Championing diversity and inclusion within our own organisation is also a key company value and Ireland is already home to a range of strategically important functions for our global business, including EMEA Trust & Safety, and our European privacy, security and SMB teams.

Explaining Gender Pay Gap reporting

The introduction of gender pay gap reporting for companies with 250 employees or more is a way to track the progress we are making towards greater organisational equity and covers:

  • the difference in mean (the average) and median (the middle value) pay between male and female employees
  • the difference in mean and median bonus pay between male and female employees
  • the proportion of men and women in a set of quartiles segmented according to pay
  • the proportion of men and women who received bonus payments and benefits in kind

Our gender pay gap data is calculated based on employee information as of June 30, 2022 and includes all payments made to employees from July 1 2021 - June 30 2022 inclusive.


Breaking down the Gender Pay Gap report

For the relevant reporting period, the mean pay gap was 5% while the median pay gap was 1.4%. The bonus gap identified was in fact more positive towards women than men - women received a mean bonus payment 3.4% higher and a median bonus payment 0.7% higher than that received by men.


These data points can in part be explained by the composition of our workforce. One requirement of the reporting process is to divide the total headcount into equal quartiles determined by pay: the upper quartile (the highest); the upper middle quartile; the lower middle quartile; and the lower quartile (the lowest).

Among the highest earning 'upper quartile', there is a slightly higher proportion of men than women - but the difference is less than half a percent (0.04%).

In both the lower middle and lower quartiles, there is a slightly higher proportion of women than men, with a difference of 0.02% and 2.6% respectively.

The relatively even distribution across these three quartiles, coupled with the strong female representation in the upper quartile, may be contributing factors to the low single digit pay gap figure at both the mean and median level.

At the same time, in the upper middle quartile - the second highest earning quartile - the proportion of men exceeds that of women more significantly relative to what is observed in other quartiles, with a difference of 7.5%. This suggests that increasing representation of women in this quartile could help to make further progress towards reducing the gender pay gap further over time.


Determining the drivers for the bonus gap being more positively weighted towards women is challenging. One potential factor for this gap is the relatively even distribution across three of the four quartiles and the relatively small difference in terms of representation even in the upper middle quartile. One potential lesser factor is that a slightly higher percentage of women received bonus payments (87.7% compared with 87.3%), although it should be noted that bonus pay is determined by a variety of factors, including individual performance, job level, base pay and the mix of pay.

As a final note, 100% of both male and female employees received benefits in kind.


Our work to date and plans for the future

While this first report is positive in terms of the lack of a material bonus gap and even distribution across the majority of quartiles determined by pay, we recognise that we have more work to do. Over the past year, we have already been taking proactive steps towards building a more equitable workforce, including:

  • enhancing our talent acquisition processes to attract a more diverse talent pool and reduce potential for bias
  • designing diverse interview panels to ensure wider representation in the candidate selection process and offering inclusive recruitment training to talent acquisition teams, hiring managers and interviewers
  • revising our internal transfer policy for existing staff to better facilitate movement into roles with greater development opportunities
  • expanding initiatives to support professional development
  • improving talent management and succession planning at a leadership level, which includes a focus on the diversity of our talent pipeline (including gender diversity)

For 2023, we're committed to making further progress towards reducing the gaps identified in this report, including a continuous review of our benefits provision, with a renewed focus to support diversity, inclusion and equity, as well as recruitment practices and learning and development.

We're still a young business in Ireland and fully committed to building on this strong foundation as we strive to create and sustain a truly diverse and equitable workforce.