“There are still a number of question marks following the release of the Government’s Gender Pay Gap Report which need to be answered. Says Beverley Sunderland, Managing Director, Crossland Employment Solicitors.
For example, will this actually apply to public sector employees? The Government has said it intends it to apply to larger public sector employers but this would require a change in the law as they are currently specifically excluded. What is the definition of ‘employees’ going to be, and will employers ensure their numbers are below 250 at the relevant 12 month reporting point?
“Also, without any real penalties for employers who refuse to publish their details other than perhaps ‘naming and shaming’, will the regulations have any real teeth? While I believe the decision to have separate bonus reporting is a good one, not reporting full and part-time employees separately also risks hiding the average between men and women, given the often different working patterns in many working families.”
The Government has confirmed that the gender pay gap reporting regulations will be effective from October 2016 with companies employing 250 or more employees required to provide their first ‘snapshot’ of data in April 2017 and from April 2018 they must publish gender pay gap information every twelve months which it says accounts for 34 percent of the total UK workforce.
The information is to be published in salary quartiles, by mean and median (which shows the ‘typical difference’). Overtime is to be excluded from the figures but there must be a separate analysis of bonus payments in a twelve month period. There will be no separate data for full and part time employees or by grade. Data must be published on a UK website in English and reported to the Government.
