Okay. It is now 11:00 o'clock. Good morning to you all, and welcome to WPP's 2023 annual general meeting. I'm Roberto Quarta, Chairman of WPP, and I'm delighted to welcome shareholders, both virtually and in person here today. We believe that it's very important for us to offer a range of options to shareholders to access and participate in the meeting. As always, we welcome your feedback on the experience. Being just after 11, I can confirm that a quorum is present, and I declare the AGM open. Let me now turn to the business of the meeting. I first of all like to introduce my fellow board members, all of which are physically present with us here today. Turning to my immediate right, I think he needs no introduction. We have our CEO, Mark Read.
Next to Mark, we have our newly appointed CFO, Joanne Wilson. Welcome, Joanne. Next is Sandrine Dufour, Chairman of our Audit Committee. Next to Sandrine, we have Ya-Qin Zhang, followed by Simon Dingemans. To my immediate left, we have our Company Secretary, Balbir Kelly-Bisla. Next to her is Angela Ahrendts, who as announced is our newly appointed Senior Independent Director. Next to Angela, we have Jasmine Whitbread, Chairman of our Compensation Committee, followed by Keith Weed, Chairman of our Sustainability Committee. Next to Keith, we have Cindy Rose. Next to Cindy, we have Tom Ilube. As previously announced, Nicole Seligman and Tarek Farahat are stepping down off the board following the conclusion of this meeting are not joining us today. Although Nicole, I think, is in the audience somewhere.
Before we proceed with the formal business of the meeting, I would like to make a few comments and share my reflections on 2022, then ask Mark to present an update on our business performance. Starting with the board. As we set out in the annual report and notice of AGM, and as just mentioned, Nicole Seligman and Tarek Farahat will not be standing for reelection at the meeting. Nicole is retiring from the board, having reached her nine-year tenure, while Tarek is stepping down off to other commitments. On behalf of the board and personally, I certainly would like to take the opportunity to thank and acknowledge both Nicole and Tarek for their significant contribution to WPP and service to the board.
To Nicole in particular, for her wise counsel as a Senior Independent Director, which has been invaluable over the years. It has been a pleasure working with both Tarek Farahat and Nicole, and they leave with our very best wishes for the future. In March, we announced that Joanne Wilson would be appointed to the board and become CFO Designate on the 19th of April, following John Rogers' decision to leave WPP to pursue broader executive opportunities beyond our company. John Rogers stepped down off the board on the 27th of April and was succeeded by Joanne as CFO from that date. John joined the company in early 2020 and made a very important contribution to WPP in his three years with us, including helping the company navigate through the pandemic. Actually, he just started when the pandemic hit.
Laying the foundation of its transformation program. He leaves with our thanks and very best wishes for the future. We're delighted to be able to welcome Joanne Wilson to WPP. Joanne Wilson is a highly regarded CFO and leader. Beyond her financial credentials, her extensive experience in data, retail, and ESG is especially valuable given the importance to our business and that of our clients. Some reflections on 2022. It was a year in which the company, once again, successfully negotiated external challenges while developing growth for its people, clients, and shareholders. Our results for 2022 brought widespread recognition of the progress the company has made in recent years. The successful diversification of its offer to clients, the strength of the business model, and the resilience of the sector in which it operates.
As I stated in my letter to shareholders in the annual report, the executive team deserves great credit for the turnaround of WPP's performance and reputation since 2018. It's very clear that clients know and now see WPP and its agency as business critical partners in today's complex marketing environment. This is a result of the company's strategy to invest in talented people who produce outstanding work, and in growth areas such as technology, data, commerce, and digital communications. WPP's longstanding investment in AI capability, for example, means that the company is well-placed to capture the opportunities of this revolutionary technology. Mark will speak to that in more detail in his presentation.
The development of WPP's capability and transformation of its offer to clients over the last few years has been underpinned and sustained demand for its services from the world's leading organization and brands. It allows us to look ahead with great confidence in the future of our company. The strategy has also delivered for our shareholders. In 2022, total cash to shareholders through dividend and share buyback exceeded GBP 1.1 billion. Our dividend policy is unchanged. To grow the dividend annually and to pay out approximately 40% of headline earnings per share. WPP is a company that relies on talent for its success, the people strategy was a primary area of focus for the company in 2022. The board and executive team were pleased to see significant improvements in the company's annual people survey, which showed its highest ever level of engagement.
WPP employee Net Promoter Score increased by 14 points. Whereas inclusion, feeling, values, and career growth were areas of particular strength. The company has continued to make progress in terms of the diversity of its leadership. We look at proportion of women on the board, that has increased to 46%, and we exceeded the target set by the Parker Review with two directors from an ethnic minority background. 46% of the executive committee members and their direct reports were women in 2022, against FTSE average of 34%. In the United States, our largest market, the proportion of senior and executive leaders who are non-white has increased from 14% in 2019 to 22% in 2022.
WPP last year was named among the best places to work for the LGBTQ+ equality for the second year in a row. As encouraged as we are by these achievements, we know that continued progress requires sustained effort and focus. To drive further change, the company has linked DEI performance to remuneration with diversity, equity, and inclusion goals included in senior executive incentive pay since 2021. Now on to creating value through sustainability. Since it was first established in 2019, the board's sustainability committee has played a very important role in supporting progress towards WPP's ESG objectives. As sustainability grows in importance for the company's people, clients, and wider shareholders, the committee has considered a range of complex and interconnected issues.
During 2022, it covered topics on which WPP has taken leadership positions, such as media decarbonization and single-use plastics, regulatory developments such as TCFD reporting, internal processes such as the company's new green claims guideline, and support for our people and communities in response to events such as the war in Ukraine. WPP's aim is to embed sustainability throughout its operating model and organization. The board and executive team do not see this as an exercise in compliance or risk mitigation, but as an opportunity to create value because it helps to attract and retain talent. Talent which is passionate with motivated people and strengthen the relationships with our client. Again, Mark will talk more about this shortly.
In conclusion, before I hand over to Mark, I would like to end by saying how proud I am of the work that WPP does for the people and for the people responsible for it. The fact that WPP continues to attract such talented individuals, drawn by strong culture, of its agencies, its sense of purpose, and its vision to become the most creative company in the world. That is the foundation of our positive outlook for WPP as the company continues to execute its strategy for growth. Now I turn it over to Mark.
Thank you, Roberto, welcome, everybody. I'd like to add my welcome to those of you in the room, as well as those joining us on the webcast. I'm going to highlight some of our key strategic developments during the year, as well as take you through a brief review of our performance in 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. First, though, please note that you should refer to this important cautionary statement here. Read that quickly. Now in looking back over the past year, I'd like to start with our work because that's really what matters for our clients and the recognition that it's achieved over the last 18 months.
You can see here the many awards that our agencies have won around the world across all of our disciplines, from advertising to media, from design to public relations. At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last summer, WPP was named the Creative Company of the Year for the second year running. The last time we achieved that was in 2017. On top of that, Ogilvy was named the Network of the Year. The last time that they made that achievement was in 2016. These are both superb accomplishments and reflect the quality of the work and our client relationships. In Mergermarket's ranking for 2022, FGS Global was the world's leading M&A advisor, as well as in the U.S., in Europe and in Asia, in each of those regions.
The firm is really becoming or has become a true powerhouse in the area of strategic and financial communications. Also proud to be recognized by WARC, the World Advertising Research Council, in all three of its global categories for excellence in marketing, ranking first in media, in effectiveness and in creative. WARC also recognized our agencies Ogilvy, EssenceMediacom and Wavemaker for their contribution. As you can see, across WPP our work is getting better and better. Something that's not only been recognized by the industry, but most importantly by our clients. Along with creativity, the other area where we continue to invest to drive our long-term growth is data and technology, as you would expect.
Within that, a first important area has been e-commerce, including partnerships with the like of Stripe and Instacart and acquisitions of businesses Corebiz, Newcraft and Diff in the e-commerce space. In media, we launched GroupM Nexus to bring our digital media operations together to create a specialist group able to serve our clients and agencies and take advantage of scale, common technology and a greater ability to offshore. Within GroupM Nexus, the Xaxis and Finecast businesses in programmatic media and connected television respectively continue to grow strongly, delivering $2 billion of billings last year. Finally, we continue to train and invest in our people, building the skills and capabilities that help our clients implement and get the most value out of platforms provided by companies like Adobe, Salesforce and Microsoft, who are all close partners to WPP.
Now, there's been a lot of attention on the topic of generative AI more broadly over the last few months, and as you would expect from this company, we have been investing in AI for some time across our businesses. We use it in our media business in GroupM and through Xaxis, where AI helps us to target media to particular audiences and to optimize campaigns. In our production company, Hogarth, we use AI to create and produce work just like a top Hollywood studio. Two years ago, we acquired the AI company Satalia here in the U.K., where we're home to a lot of the innovation that's going on in the area of artificial intelligence. In addition, we're using AI in more creative ways to help to support the creative process and to bring our ideas to life.
At our first quarter trading update, we highlighted three recent examples of the work that we've done that you can see on this chart. The first was a campaign for Lacta, a Mondelēz brand in Greece from Ogilvy, which I'll show you in a minute. Our team at AKQA Bloom used AI to promote Chile's NotCo plant-based meat company, demonstrating what would happen if animals aged naturally to their full maturity. Wunderman Thompson have been working with the Iran Democracy Council to highlight the future for women in Iran. You can look at those fantastic examples later by scanning the QR codes in the AGM presentation. In the meantime, I'd like to show you the Ogilvy work for Lacta in Greece. Could you run that video, please?
For hundreds of years, everyone was writing love letters. It all came to a halt when this happened.
We are calling it iPhone.
Because mobile chatting has reduced beautiful words of love to something that your cat could have typed accidentally, eventually reducing love to a single tap. Lacta Chocolate has always believed in expressing love in the most fascinating way. That's why it decided to use the most advanced technology there is to remind people how to write love letters again. Enter AI Love You, a web app that creates personalized love letters with the power of ChatGPT. You might think, "Artificial intelligence expressing feelings? Who would want this?" According to a recent study, one in three men, so lots of people. With AI Love You, you just say whom you want to say "I love you" to and why. In a few seconds, AI composes a love letter probably better than the one you would write if you are not exactly a poet at heart.
You can edit it and change the tone of voice before sending it via a unique link. When the recipient points their camera at any Lacta chocolate, they will see the love letter magically pop up with AR. By magically, we mean through hard work because we trained a neural network to recognize all 36 Lacta packages. Simple as that. No QR code needed. That's how writing love letters became a thing in 2023. The end.
All right, a fantastic idea. If you do use it, be careful. You may be asked if you wrote it yourself. We're developing longer term plans for using AI in our business. We do believe it will be fundamental to WPP's business in our future. It will help to automate processes, particularly in our media and our production agencies to help in assisting decision-making across the company. We've asked ourselves the question that I know a lot of people are asking today is, what will be the impact on employment and people in WPP? Will it create jobs or will it destroy jobs? For WPP, I have to say I believe that it's an opportunity.
We have to treat it as one, just like we have with other technological innovations that have swept through our industry in the past two decades, and that we have successfully navigated. This will apply to jobs as well. It's a lot easier today to identify the jobs that will be impacted by AI than to identify all the jobs that will be created by AI. Obviously, we don't know what they will be. I think if we do embrace this AI revolution and use it to do great work for our clients, then I'm sure it will create new jobs and new opportunities for WPP and our people. Now, the last area of focus for WPP I'd like to touch on, is purpose.
Back in 2018, we set out a new purpose for WPP: to use the power of creativity to build a better future for our people, planet, clients, and communities. We've both been guided by this purpose over the last five years and taken action to support each of these areas. For our people, we work hard, as Roberto said, to create a diverse, positive culture at WPP, and I'm very proud of the progress that we've made. In 2022, we were ranked 6th in the FTSE Women Leaders Review, which ranks FTSE 100 companies by the proportion of women among executive committee members and their direct reports.
We're also recognized in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, and we received a top score at the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index and featured, as Roberto said, among the Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality. We know there's more work to do across our industry to improve diversity, and this does remain a priority for all of us at WPP. In terms of the planet, we've committed to be net zero in our own operations by 2025, and in our supply chain, our Scope three emissions by 2030. We've made good progress towards reducing the absolute emissions across our own operation, driven in large part by our Compass strategy.
In 2022, GroupM launched a global framework for media decarbonization with the support of a leading coalition of clients that aims to tackle the 50% of Scope three emissions that come from our media buying activities, probably the biggest contribution. Lastly, to touch on our role with communities. Our people live and work in communities, many of them have sadly been impacted by war and natural disaster. In Ukraine, where we have 200 people, Pakistan, where we have around 150 people, and Turkey, where we have close to 1,000 people. In each of those countries, we've moved swiftly to support our people and the broader communities that surround them. I think it's fair to say that our purpose is important for us as a company. It's certainly important for our people.
I believe it makes WPP a better destination for people and a better partner to our clients. It's no way in conflict with our financial objectives, but supportive of them. I think we should be proud of the work that we've done and the progress that we've made so far. These are the key strategic moves. What have been the results for you, our shareholders? From a financial perspective, we had a strong year in 2022. We upgraded our guidance a number of times during the year and delivered a full year growth of 6.9%. Our performance was broad-based across all of our major agencies and nearly all of our key markets.
We entered, as a result, 2023 in a strong competitive position based on our enhanced client offer, the quality of the work that we do for the clients, and the scale of GroupM, demonstrated in the close to $6 billion worth of new business that we won in 2022. Our transformation plan remains on track, with savings coming in ahead of target in 2022. We're on track to deliver the aggregate savings by 2025. Lastly, we gave guidance for continued growth and margin expansion in 2023 as we continue to transform and invest in our business. Our performance in the 1st quarter of 2023 was very much in line with our expectations, and we reiterated at that point our guidance for the full year.
As a result of our good performance, we were enabled to invest significantly in the business in 2022 in the data and technology platforms, talent, IT, and campuses that I've mentioned. At the same time, we have maintained a strong balance sheet and returned over GBP 1.1 billion to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends. For 2022, the proposed GBP 0.244 final dividend, together with the interim dividend paid in November 2022, gives a full year dividend of GBP 0.394 per share, representing a very respectable 26% growth year-on-year. In summary, your company has delivered a strong performance in 2022 and made a positive start to 2023, very much in line with our expectations.
We look forward to the rest of 2023, despite the uncertainties with confidence, and that's down to the many talented individuals that make up the 115,000 people who work for your company around the world. I'd like to close by thanking each one of them, their effort and commitment to the company, and thank you very much for listening. I now hand back to Roberto.
Thank you, Mark. Now let's move on to the formal business of the AGM. You've all received a copy of the notice of the meeting dated 23 March 2023, which fully explains all the agenda items for today's meeting. As usual, I will take the notice of meeting as read. Now, before dealing with the items of business contained in the notice, we'd like to address any questions which are relevant to the business of the meeting. For those shareholders joining us virtually, if you have not already submitted a question in advance and would like to ask a question, you may submit questions via live webcast. To ask a question, you should select the Ask a Question tab from within the navigation bar at the top right corner of the screen to open the message box and type in your question.
Once finished, press the Submit button to the right of the message box to submit your question. For those shareholders who are in the room and would like to ask a question, please raise your hand so a microphone can be brought to you. Please state your name before proceeding with your question. May I remind you that only registered shareholders, duly authorized representatives or registered proxies may ask a question. We'll make every effort to give shareholders the opportunity to ask a question if they wish to do so. Now we can start with questions from shareholders in the room. The gentleman here. Just one second.
Thank you. Nick Steiner, private shareholder. Thank you for the both presentations. A lot of food for thought in both of those, including keeping hold of your staff and keeping them well and AI and so forth. I struggle to keep up with it. I've got three questions based really around page 37. I think we call these places hubs, and you've got a new way of working. The first is really relating to Greater China. You say we opened our third state-of-the-art campus in Greater China in Guangzhou at the start of 2023. I think China is like to be increasingly important in the world. We have politicians creating all sorts of difficulties.
The impression I get talking to companies is that the relationships between companies in China and worldwide is actually quite good. How do you see things progressing with this company and China and of course, the difficult politics that are currently underway? Shall I leave that do one question at a time or?
No, we'll do them all.
Okay. The second one, CEO all staff emails accumulated 1.8 million unique opens. I imagine by opens you mean, well, are opened but are they read? And that's sort of my own difficulties with, you know, the number of emails I'm getting. I may open them, do I read them? Time runs out. How are you coping with this enormous scale of emails? A lot of it is probably repetitive and so forth. Aligned with that, of course, you've got 5,900 participants joining your event. It means that 99.9% of those are gonna remain silent because there isn't time to talk. That's question two, how you manage the sheer scale of things and of course not only within the company, but people like myself at the other end.
The final one is the recognition of mental health, and you comment on that elsewhere in your report. It seems to be an increasing problem. I think one of the points you make is people sitting down and just sort of doing social media, so on and so forth. So again, applies how do you deal with that within WPP? Of course, looking at it in a more altruistic way, how are you helping the population come to grips with AI and everything? Mark said, you may be asked whether you wrote it, so I'll leave it like that.
Okay. Thank you. Three very good questions. Mark, I think you might have taken them.
Shall I kick off? Yeah. I think on China, look, we have a fantastic business in China. It's about 5% of our group's revenue and have close to 8,000 or 9,000 people there. Ya-Qin, as you can see, is a board member who doesn't represent China, if you'd like, but is from China and gives us insight into what's going on in the market there. We have had a tough couple of years with COVID. You'll see that actually our business was down in the first quarter of this year. I think we expect a more positive trajectory as the year goes on. As we think about sort of the geopolitics of China, we work both with Chinese companies and with Western multinational companies in the market.
You know, amongst our clients include, you know, many of the largest Chinese companies selling consumer products and other things to Chinese consumers. The vast majority of our people who work there in China are Chinese nationals. We have actually very few expats in the market today. I think we are able to operate the business sort of in line with the standards you would expect of us as a global organization. I think that helps us sort of navigate the political situation, and we'll have to see how things, you know, turn out. I saw Elon Musk was asked the same question yesterday in an interview about, you know, the relationship between Tesla and China. You know, there are big organizations like Apple that have substantial manufacturing bases.
I think, like everybody, we hope the political situation stays stable, and we're very pleased that we're able to run the business there, you know, in line with what would be called sort of our global, our global standards. On the subject of emails, I mean, I hope if they open them, they read them. Certainly, if they don't open them, they're not gonna read them. It's a start that they are opening the emails. Since COVID, it's quite interesting, actually, when I took over as CEO, we'd never sent a global email to everybody at WPP before. It's something that we started to do, talk about the company. Most of our people work inside our agencies and hear from their agency leadership relatively regularly.
We started a process of talking to our people from WPP first by email. Since COVID, I now do a monthly town hall, where I'm joined with various people from the company, and people are able to post anonymous questions in the chat, and we try and answer as many of those questions as we can, sort of raise, talk about what's on people's minds. You just have to manage that sort of volume of communication. We tend to get 4,000 or 5,000 people joining those calls each month, so I think quite a good selection of people from across the company, and we do them in time zones that reflect sort of the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
On the topic of mental health allies or mental health, look, I think we have all realized, particularly since COVID, how it's impacted many more people, you know, in the country, particularly younger people. I think, you know, I'm very proud of the work. We started an initiative around mental health allies in one of our agencies, MediaCom, in the U.K. We scaled that, or we rolled that out across the whole of our U.K. business, and many of our people, both senior and junior, are mental health allies. You can see it in their email signature. We've now extended that to the U.S. and actually to Singapore as well.
I think that, you know, we have to play our role as a company understanding the pressures that go on in people's private lives, and the role that we can play as their, you know, employer in helping them get through that. I think, you know, our focus is really just making sure that people are all right, and we ask people if they are and help them sort of navigate their way through that. They're all. It is something that's very much on our minds, and I think, you know, it has been seen to be increasingly the responsibility of an employer or the partial responsibility of an employer that perhaps was not seen in that way, you know, five, 10 or 20 years ago. Thank you for your questions.
Thanks, Mark. Question. Any other questions from the floor? Gentleman here.
Hi.
Scott Wallace, shareholder.
I'm sorry.
Nominees.
Couldn't hear that.
You couldn't? Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Okay. Scott Wallace, shareholder in Nominees. Just looking at your annual report here, I see BlackRock own nearly 8%, Silchester International 5%. A lot of investment trusts contact me without my permission nowadays in the order to engage with the shareholders and these cover up all the individual shareholders that you're not in contact with directly for a company like this, though you should be in some way. I think it was Archie Norman at Marks & Spencer recently wants to sort of pantheize this sort of stuff to get you to contact more shareholders online, then you'd know how many individual shareholders are hidden behind these actual holdings. Secondly, as you're a company involved in AI, I see there are what? 12, 14 directors in total, aren't there?
With AI, does this mean we'll have fewer directors in the future or are they already AI already? Thank you.
I don't know about the whether or not AI is gonna impact directors. I hope not. It may help.
You're a robot, aren't you?
I think so. I think so. Perhaps it's an avatar that's facing today. I think that, while AI may actually help the board, it will not be a substitute for board members to continue doing their job. On the issue of communication for shareholder.
Yeah. Well, I would say, I don't think we have looked at how we can communicate with the individual shareholders behind. As a company, I think it's a difficult thing to do. What I would say is that the way we can communicate electronically has made, I think, the company much more transparent and made us much more transparent to shareholders. Meetings that we used to have had perhaps taken place behind closed doors are now available online. There's a tremendous amount available to shareholders on our website for them to read about, and we always welcome contact from individual shareholders. I think if we could get behind the sort of nominee accounts, it would make life easier, but that's not always feasible.
You don't seem to get many online questions, though. All the meetings I've been to of large companies, very few people can be bothered. It's only when people turn up like this that you generally get a lot of questions, you know.
I think it's sad that people, you know, we don't get more people turning up at meetings.
Is that 'cause they lack the knowledge of the technology or they're too lazy or do you know how many people are viewing online at this moment? I don't know.
Can I ask the question? I don't know the answer to that right now.
I think perhaps it's a direct correlation between state of the company performance and people's interest. You would think that people would be interested in good time and bad times. If you look back over the eight years I've been on this board. You may remember that we had, you know, sold out audience a few years ago, and actually, the audience is getting smaller.
That's probably 'cause you have more wine then.
Perhaps. Perhaps. It is a shame because, you know, making this facility available to everyone, you would think that people would want to listen and participate and ask questions. Anyways, we'll continue to provide that to all of our shareholders. Thank you for your question.
Thank you very much.
Anybody else from the audience before we move on to questions from those on virtual? Yes, please. Here. Right here. Right here in front.
Good morning. My name's Beatrice Brown, I'm here today on behalf of ShareAction with a question regarding WPP's policies related to the insecurity of work, particularly for lower paid employees and contracted workers. I'd first like to thank the company for your previous engagement with ShareAction on the issue of the living wage and as part of the Workforce Disclosure Initiative. I'm delighted that WPP is a living wage employer, the company plays an active role in the campaign to make London a living wage city. Paying a living wage is one of the most important steps an employer can take to alleviate in-work poverty. However, the number of hours worked and the security of those hours can significantly affect the amount of pay employees take home.
The Living Hours standard established by the Living Wage Foundation presents employers with the opportunity to provide staff with security and stability. Living Hours accredited employers commit to providing workers with decent notice periods for shifts of at least four weeks notice with guaranteed payment if shifts are canceled within this notice period, the right to a contract that reflects accurate hours worked, and a guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week unless the worker requests otherwise. ShareAction's Good Work program coordinates a coalition of institutional investors with GBP 3.7 trillion in assets under management. Following successful engagement on the living wage, its members are now engaging with companies on the issue of insecure work and promoting the Living Hours standard as a marker of responsible business practice on this issue.
I'd like to ask the board to give an overview of WPP's approach to contracts and how their current practices compare to the above measures. Will the company be a leader and become an early adopter of the standard? Lastly, would WPP be willing to meet with ShareAction, the Living Wage Foundation, and investors from the Good Work coalition to discuss this further? Thank you.
Thank you. Mark?
Thank you for the question. A few comments or in response, I'd say firstly, you know, we are pleased that we are a Living Wage. We do pay the Living Wage across all our businesses in the U.K. I think secondly, Fiona Gordon, who leads our Ogilvy business here in the U.K., is co-chair of, I think it's called the Creative and Cultural Industries Action Group for the creative and cultural industry. We are championing that across the creative industries. I think the practice you refer to would be a zero-hours contracts. We don't use zero-hours contracts at WPP.
Where we have people who are on sort of freelance contracts or other contracts, they tend to have notice periods and sort of, and sort of, different terms from what, from what you say. We're in the practice of using zero-hours contracts, but we'll be very happy to meet, obviously, and discuss that with you further. Thank you.
Any other questions from the floor? Mark.
Picking up on the attendance of annual general meetings, which has just been raised. I noticed in the GSK annual report, they actually reported on the number who were attending physically and the number online. It does seem to me that generally this is a matter of concern. I think it's very important that we keep the physical meetings going and hybrid is the way to go. It needs to be examined why investors aren't attending and how best to do that. There are other ways of getting good information out with investor meet and things like that, where you can have a sort of to large numbers. I think it's very important to keep the physical meeting. What research are you doing into this?
I think our intention is to continue to provide a physical meeting as long as we have people who are willing to come here. I think in terms of try to understand why people attend or not attend, I think it's been more difficult because that would mean contacting every individual shareholder and asking that question. I think all we can do is provide the facility and hope that investors will take advantage of it. That is what we will continue to do so. I know some companies have decided to go totally virtual and not provide a physical meeting. We've decided to continue that unless we find that there's no interest in doing so, we will have to adopt virtual meeting only structure.
The other thing that we'll continue to do is have all our board members here to give you an opportunity to ask questions, each and every one of these board members, which I think is the right way for us to be able to communicate and answer questions from the, you, the individual shareholders. Institutional shareholders, as you know, have the opportunity to meet up with us and with management on a regular basis, which is not the same for individual shareholders, and this is the venue that can provide that. Anyone else? No. Okay. Now, we'll take any questions that are coming in from the webcast.
Thank you, Chairman. We do have a question on the webcast from Andrea Wilson. The question is: The reported gender pay gap at WPP in the UK has widened 2022 over 2021, with an explanation in the report of underrepresentation of women in senior roles. Presumably, this is true across all major markets. What changes in the people plan are anticipated to remedy this in the UK and other countries?
Why don't I tackle that question. I think the first thing we have to understand is the 2022 gender pay report, because of the time delay, really reflects the amounts that people were paid in 2020 and 2021 and the population of our employees in that period. We have made, as you saw, both approach and I refer to significant progress in promoting women at more senior levels inside the company. I think we will expect the gender pay gap as a result to correct itself or to come more in line with where it should be, and our goal for it to be for us not to have a gender pay gap over the next year and then on an ongoing basis.
One of the challenges it does reflect is. Just people understand the gender pay. It doesn't reflect whether men and women are paid the same amount for the same job. It reflects the proportion of people of different levels of seniority inside the organization. We have historically had an organization with more men in more senior positions and more women in more junior positions in the company. That's something that, as you can see from the numbers, we are correcting, and I expect that to flow through into the reported gender pay gap over next year and the year after that. Thank you for the question. Any other questions from?
There are no further questions on the webcast.
No further. Answers your question. Okay. Well, thank you, first of all, for the questions from the room and the one question from virtual. Now we can move on to the voting. The resolutions are set out in the notice of the meeting. I formally propose that each of the resolutions are put to vote of the meeting. Resolutions 1 through 18 are proposed as ordinary resolutions and require a simple majority of votes to be passed. Whilst Resolution 19 to 21 are proposed as special resolutions and require at least 75% of the votes to be cast in favor and passed.
As stated in the notice, all resolutions will be determined by way of a poll rather than a show of hands. I now direct the company's registrar's Computershare Investor Services PLC to act as scrutineers in relation to this poll. Only the votes of shareholders present today or shareholders who have submitted their proxy votes in accordance with the details set out in the proxy form will be taken into account. When you came into the room, you were each given a poll card with all those resolutions that have been proposed at the annual general meeting. If you are a shareholder or a proxy for shareholders, including a proxy for US Depositary, with respect to shares represented by ADRs, please complete that card and sign it where indicated.
In the case of a corporate shareholder, the card should be completed by its authorized representative and presented at this meeting or by proxy. The number of shares being voted should be entered into the poll card, and all details will be checked against the company's share register. Finally, I should mention that those shareholders present who have already lodged proxies and do not wish to change the vote need not vote on the poll unless they wish to do so. Please place your completed poll card in the ballot boxes located in the doors as you leave the meeting. I wanna thank all of you who took time to submit the proxy votes in advance of this meeting.
What I can tell you is that proxy votes submitted ahead of today's meeting, in respect of which I, as the Chairman of the meeting, have been appointed as proxy and have completed a poll card in respect of such votes amounting to approximate average of 900 million votes per resolution, representing over 75% of the company's issue share capital in respect of each resolution. Based on the proxy votes received, I can tell you that the provisional results show that all resolutions are carried. The poll will close in 10 minutes, and the results will be released by a stock exchange announcement and will be available on our website as soon as practically possible. That concludes a formal business of the AGM.
On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank all shareholders for their participation today and all our stakeholders for their continued support. There will be some refreshments, will now be served in the lobby area on the ground floor. Thank you very much for attending, and have a good day.