Gender Pay Gap Reporting
You may have heard about the forthcoming need for employers to submit information regarding pay relating to gender.
For purposes of clarification the gender pay gap is the average difference between men and women’s aggregate hourly pay. There are proposed regulations subject to the approval of Parliament in which employers will be required to publish information regarding this subject area. This is likely to commence as from April 2017.
Points to remember;
- The gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay or pay discrimination.
- The regulations will apply to employers who employ 250 or more employees.
- An employer will be required to publish figures on their website, and submit compliance evidence on an annual basis to the Government.
An employer will also need to calculate three other types of figures;
- Gender bonus gap.
- Proportion of men and women receiving a bonus.
- Proportion of men and women working at each ‘quartile’ of the organisations’s pay distribution.
The gender pay gap differs from equal pay as it is concerned with the differences in the average pay between male and female staff over a period of time. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same or similar jobs. An organisation who have a higher number of men in senior roles and women in junior roles are more likely to have a gender pay gap.
When publishing the gender pay information this does not have to be part of a full report. On an annual basis an employer will need to publish the required information. Dependent on the commencement of the legislation an organisation must publish their first report within 12 months as from April 2017.
In order to address the gender pay gap an organisation would be advised to update their policies which would potentially include equality/Inclusion, paternity and parental leave entitlement and bullying/harassment.