Guaranteed Higher Grade!
Free Quote
Each measure gives you a slightly different take on your gender pay gap, but each is more meaningful if read alongside the others and in the context of your overall HR and payroll policies and practices, such as training and development, or recruitment and selection. It’s likely that your recruitment practices, for example, will impact on starting salaries, which will in turn feed into both your mean and median gender pay gap figures, while the way in which you manage performance may well feed into your bonus pay gap. You will also want to read each year’s figures alongside those of previous years, both to measure progress and in order to gain a greater understanding of your gender pay gap.
Since voluntarily publishing its ethnicity pay gap for the first time in December 2017, Deloitte has continued to focus on improving black, Asian and minority ethnic representation, as well as being more vocal about this externally. Deloitte is proud to have been one of the first organisations to sign the Race at Work Charter developed by the Government and Business in the Community and welcomed the government consultation on ethnicity pay gap reporting.
Deloitte has now published its second ethnicity pay gap report and accompanying narrative. As with its first report, Deloitte has followed the statutory gender pay gap reporting methodology when calculating the gap. However, this year the company has also calculated and reported its total ethnicity earnings gap – a view that looks at the firm as a whole, and includes the total earnings of both its employees and equity partners used to provide a mean and median calculation. Deloitte has committed to publishing this each year (as it has also done for gender pay gap reporting).
Developing a workforce which reflects the city it serves is a key priority for the Greater London Authority. In March 2018 the GLA was one of the first organisations to publish its ethnicity pay gap.
The mayor has led by example in publishing this data and is committed not only to recognise pay inequality and seek to address it at the GLA and its functional bodies, but also to encourage businesses in the capital to follow this lead. Since the publication of the report, the GLA has called on the Government to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory, in the way that it is for gender. In this time the GLA has also developed its first ethnicity pay gap action plan, which sets out a programme of activity aimed at closing the ethnicity pay gap in the GLA.
If your organisation does not employ enough people to be covered by the regulations, it is still a useful discipline for you to calculate the size of your organization’s gender pay gap and think about what action may need to be taken. And if your employee numbers cross over the threshold or, as is currently under consideration, the Government should at any time lower the 250-employee reporting threshold, if you’re already collecting and analyzing the data, you will be ahead of the game.
You must publish the required data on the government gender pay gap reporting service website. For private and voluntary sector employers, the information will have to be accompanied by a statement confirming its accuracy, signed by a director or equivalent, which includes their name and job title. Once you have published your report on the reporting service website, it automatically appears on the Government’s viewing service website, where any interested person is able to access it. The viewing service website also lets people know if a report is late.
You must also publish your pay data on your own organization’s website in a manner that is accessible to employees and the public and you will have to ensure that it remains there for at least three years.
Although there is no legal obligation to publish a narrative, the Government strongly encourages employers to produce a voluntary accompanying narrative that provides some context, explains any pay gaps, and sets out what actions will be taken.
Failure to comply amounts to a breach of the Equality Act 2010 and would therefore open an organisation up to action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The EHRC will initially write to any organisation that appears not to have complied with the regulations, and after that, any enforcement action will proceed in accordance with the EHRC’s enforcement policy. The EHRC also publicly names those organisations that have failed to publish a gender pay gap report by the due date.
Public sector employers should bear in mind that the EHRC is also charged with monitoring public sector bodies’ compliance with the public sector duty across England, Scotland and Wales and will be able to take enforcement action if necessary.
People frequently confuse the gender pay gap with the equal pay gap; the two overlap, but they are not the same.
Equal pay means that there should be no difference in the contractual terms of a woman and a man doing equal work, who both work for the same employer. Equal work is work which is:
If someone has reason to believe they are not getting equal pay, they can bring an equal pay claim to the employment tribunal. Men as well as women can bring equal pay claims. Women (and men) have been entitled to equal pay for equal work since 1970, when the Equal Pay Act was introduced; since 2010 the law on equal pay has been set out in the ‘equality of terms’ provisions of the Equality Act 2010.
National statistics do not reveal differences in rates of pay between men and women doing equal work because they cannot take account of differing employment characteristics, such as experience or the duration of time spent in a job, nor is there any national framework for job evaluation. In the UK it’s up to each individual employer to decide whether or not to adopt job evaluation as a means of measuring job demands, but in some countries (Slovakia, for example2), there is a national job evaluation scheme, while in others (such as Australia3), there is a nationally agreed voluntary standard which employers are encouraged to adopt.
What you say about your gender pay gap, and where and how you choose to say it, is of paramount importance. While the reporting process makes publication of your figures and the sign-off of those figures, compulsory, you also have the option of including an accompanying narrative and an action plan, as outlined above. Communication is also about how you inform your employees and the wider world about your organization’s gender pay gap report.
The Government has already consulted on extending pay gap reporting to ethnicity and, although there is no indication yet of this becoming a legal requirement, some organisations are already reporting. In Appendix 2 we suggest how you might prepare for this.
More recently, in June 2019 the Government Equalities Office, which has oversight of gender pay gap reporting, advised the Treasury Select Committee that the Government is considering extending gender pay gap reporting requirements to employers with fewer than 250 staff.
The next scheduled review will be in 2022, but proposals being discussed for implementation before then include requiring employers to submit more information on their policies to close their gender pay gap and requiring them to provide more data, for example, on maternity leave and job tenure.
Consideration is also being given to whether the EHRC’s powers to enforce the rules should be enhanced. Companies might be required, for example, to include gender pay gap data in their annual reports, which would mean the information would be audited. While any changes would be subject to public consultation, it would be prudent to bear these potential developments in mind.
Gender pay gaps are the outcome of economic, cultural, societal and educational factors. Some argue that they also reflect the outcomes of personal choice but, whereas the decision to seek paid employment may well be an individual choice, the outcome of that choice is strongly influenced by matters outside of the individual’s control, such as the availability and affordability of childcare, and it is still the case that the choices available to women are more constrained than those available to men.
There are a number of reasons for seeking to close the gender pay gap both at a national and organizational level. With women outperforming men educationally, the case for ensuring their skills are fully utilized is incontestable. Failing to tackle a gender pay gap is likely to cause damage to your organization’s reputation in the eyes of both current and potential clients and employees.
A key source of evidence on the economic dimensions of the gender pay gap is the report of the 2016 inquiry into the gap by the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC).10 The WEC found that the UK’s 19.2% gap (2016) was not only an equality issue; it also represented a significant loss to UK productivity and, in the face of an ageing workforce, a skills crisis and the need for a more competitive economy, the gap needed to be addressed. The WEC concluded that tackling the underlying causes of the gender pay gap would not only increase productivity and address skills shortages, but it would also improve the performance of individual organisations.
At an organizational level, promoting gender equality is part of being a good employer, one that strives to achieve fairness at work. Being open about your gender pay gap and what you’re doing about it increases employee confidence in you as an employer, and in your pay and reward processes.
Organisations with gender-diverse profiles at senior levels make a better financial return than those who do not. McKinsey’s Diversity Matters research has shown that for every 10% increase in gender diversity in a UK company’s executive team, earnings before interest and taxes rose by 3.5%.14 But the national ratio of women in leadership relative to men is poor (there are currently two male managers for every female manager), with the UK lagging behind comparable economies such as the United States, Sweden and Canada.
Women make up around half the talent pool, so attracting and retaining them is central to future success. Women are better qualified than ever before, with girls still doing better than boys at both GCSE and A Level in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Even before gender pay gap reporting was introduced, employees and job-seekers were taking pay gap data into account when applying for a job or considering whether to stay in one, but with gender pay gap reports now available on the Government’s gender pay gap viewing service site, school-leavers, graduates, and older workers looking to change jobs are all now able to access information about your gender pay gap, and they are sure to do so.
For women, an employer’s record on diversity is especially important. PwC’s report, The Female Millennial: A new era of talent, shows that young women seek out employers with a strong record on diversity. Eighty-five per cent of female millennials surveyed said an employer’s policy on diversity, equality and workforce inclusion was important when deciding whether or not to work for an employer.15 Being open about your gender pay gap, and proactive in tackling its causes, will reduce the likelihood of your organisation being seen as a second- or third-choice employer.
Failure to comply amounts to a breach of the Equality Act 2010 and would, therefore, lay an organisation open to action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The EHRC will initially write to any organisation that appears not to have complied with the regulations and, after that, any enforcement action will proceed in accordance with its enforcement policy. The EHRC also publicly names those organisations that have failed to publish a gender pay gap report by the due date.
The EHRC has published a policy statement setting out what it will do to encourage employers to meet the gender pay gap regulations and its approach to enforcing them.
As with any form of publicity, there are risks. They include:
Keep a record of your communications strategy and of any lessons learned and share these with your colleagues.
The terms used in the regulations
An employer that has 250 or more employees on the ‘snapshot’ date applying to their sector is caught by the regulations and is required to report on its gender pay gap. The regulations focus on the number of individual employees, and not on full-time equivalents. This means that each part-time employee, including job-sharers, counts as one employee: when two people share a job, they are counted as two employees.
Most employers know whether they have 250 or more employees. It is only where the number of employees varies that organisations will need to go through the process of checking if the regulations apply to them. They will need to check where the number:
The death of George Floyd in America and the resulting outrage, characterized by the Black Lives Matters protests that crossed over to the UK, have brought historical inequalities faced by ethnic minorities sharply into focus. More employers are investing in recruiting dedicated inclusion and diversity practitioners to support the creation of an inclusive organizational culture.
The government published a consultation into whether employers should be required to report on pay gaps by ethnicity in October 2018. The consultation sought views on:
There is as yet no indication of when ethnicity pay reporting will be introduced, and while the potential complexity of reporting by ethnicity means that this is likely to be some way off, a small but growing number of organisations are already reporting, and for those who are not yet doing so, it would be prudent to start doing the groundwork now.
750+ Finest Fashion Dissertation Topics for 2024
Fashion - a subject that might seem to be all fun and glam. But only the students know how much fal
Top 100 Ecology Research Topics with Top Tips
Are you ready to dive into the fascinating world of ecology research? Whether you're a student emba
100+ Trending Anatomy Research Topics
The term anatomy refers to the biological structures that the eye sees. So, when you come acr
200 Trending Fashion Research Paper Topics - Updated for 2024
Since its inception in the mid-1800s, fashion has always been prevalent in our society. However, on
