Mercy Health is a Catholic organisation founded by the Sisters of Mercy, continuing the legacy of Catherine McAuley, who opened the first House of Mercy in Dublin, Ireland, in 1827.
Built on a tradition of serving those in need, today Mercy Health employs more than 10,000 staff and delivers a wide range of services, including acute and subacute hospital care, aged care, mental health programs, maternity and women’s health services, early parenting support, palliative care, home care and health worker education.
Operating across Victoria, southern New South Wales, northern Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT, Mercy Health is guided by the core values of compassion, hospitality, respect, innovation, stewardship and teamwork, ensuring that care is provided with dignity and kindness to those in need.
Our commitment to gender equality
At Mercy Health, we are committed to advancing gender equality and fostering a workplace culture where all employees are valued, respected and given equal opportunities to succeed. Gender equality is integral to our values and underpins our approach to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone belongs.
Actions taken in the last year
Mercy Health has been recognised as an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality (EOCGE), or its equivalent, each year since 2008. This is the result of an ongoing and sustained effort to drive positive change. We are pleased to announce we have renewed this certification for the 2025 – 2028 period.
We marked International Women’s Day in 2025 by delivering a range of masterclasses aimed at empowering women, with sessions on financial planning, self-defense and building a personal brand. We also celebrated women who have inspired compassion, resilience and outstanding results at work by adding their names to the Mercy Health Honour Roll.
We undertook a comprehensive gender pay analysis of our Health Services business unit, identifying there were no like-for-like gender pay discrepancies. Recommendations focused on improving job architecture, succession planning and remuneration reviews.
As a result of this, we completed an organisational talent and succession planning review, setting new goals and strategic direction. To ensure outcomes are met, targets were introduced to achieve gender balance in the succession of executive roles, fill at least 50 per cent of leadership vacancies internally and establish a minimum of two successors for each executive position. This was complemented by an executive target to reduce the gender pay gap by five per cent over the next three years.
Similarly, the Corporate Governance, Remuneration and Nominations Committee endorsed a pathway for compliance to achieve 40:40:20 representation on the Mercy Health Boards.
We have also undertaken a detailed Paid Parental Leave Policy review, with the aim of improving paid parental leave access for all employees and enabling a higher proportion of men to take Primary Carer’s Leave.
Insights from our gender pay gap analysis
At Mercy Aged and Community Care Ltd (MACCL), our average total remuneration gender pay gap slightly favours men. However, we have made significant progress in closing the gap, decreasing the average total remuneration gender pay gap by 1.3 percentage points in the 2023-2024 reporting period, and a further 0.4 percentage points in the 2024-2025 period.
At Mercy Hospitals Victoria Ltd (MHVL), we have an average total remuneration gender pay gap of 34.4% and a median total remuneration gender pay gap of 10.1%. Whilst average total remuneration remains unchanged between 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, the median total remuneration has decreased from 13.1% by 3 percentage points to 10.1%. The median base salary gap has also decreased from 5.4% to 2.5%, meaning it is now within WGEA’s acceptable limits of ±5%.
We have identified that the biggest contributor and influence on the Gender Pay Gap at MHVL is women’s overrepresentation in lower paying roles (such as administration or cleaning) and men’s overrepresentation in highly remunerated management or technical roles.
Key areas of focus
We recognise that we have more work to do to create gender equality at Mercy Health. We will continue to deliver the commitments in our Gender Equity Plan 2023-2026 and, as a WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality, we will progress towards achieving our gender pay gap targets.
Mercy Health is working to remove barriers that may impede gender equality by:
- Ensuring a flexible working approach that includes targeted actions to offer part-time and flexible working arrangements at all leadership levels
- Encouraging senior leaders to visibly adopt flexible working options and empower their teams to do the same
- Targeting recruitment of men in nursing, midwifery and carer roles, and other roles where men have historically been underrepresented in our workforce
- Improving recruitment practices to minimise potential unconscious bias in attracting and retaining staff
- Improving rostering to ensure that opportunities to earn supplementary income are fair and accessible to all staff
Next steps
Mercy Health is committed to continuous improvement in gender equality practices. We will use the insights gained from our reporting process to inform strategic initiatives and further embed gender equality across our organisation.
