Gender Pay Gap: A duty to Report?

Many employment sectors in Great Britain feature a difference between the average earnings of men and women, known as the gender pay gap.

Employment Law

Regulations are now in force whereby certain employers must publish annually on their own website, and report to the government online, their organisation’s gender pay figures, namely:

  • Gender pay gap & gender bonus gap, both in hourly pay (mean and median averages);
  • Proportion of men and women receiving bonuses;
  • Proportion of men and women in each quartile of the organisation’s pay structure.

The following checklist should help you work out if you are required to report gender pay figures, or have a choice. You are required to do so if:

  1. You have 250 or more employees based in Great Britain (i.e. England, Scotland or Wales) as at the “snapshot date”. This is 5 April for businesses and charities, and 31 March for public sector organisations.
  2. “Employees” includes employees with a contract of employment; workers/agency workers with a contract to do work/provide services; and self-employed people if they must personally perform the work.
  3. Agency workers are included in the headcount for the agency that provides them (not the employer they are assigned to).
  4. An individual employed by a service company, which in turn contracts to provide a service to an employer, is included in the headcount for the service company if it employs 250 or more employees (not in the headcount for the end-user employer).
  5. If you have part time workers, each part time worker counts as one employee.
  6. If you have job-share arrangements, each person within the job-share counts as one employee.
  7. Partners in traditional partnerships and limited liability partnerships are not counted as employees because they receive a share of the profits, which is not directly comparable with employees’ pay.
  8. If your organisation is part of a group of employers, a separate report must be provided for each separate legal entity (i.e. employer) with at least 250 employees.
  9. There are complex rules on whether the headcount includes people working abroad for an employer based in Great Britain; or working in Great Britain for an employer based abroad; or employed by an overseas entity and seconded to an organisation in Great Britain.

Companies should seriously consider their obligations relating to gender pay gap reporting and the positive impact of addressing any in-balances in the culture and working environment of its staff. For independent legal advice on this matter, please speak to one of our team.
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