From 6 April 2017 employers in Great Britain with more than 250 staff will be required by law to publish the following four types of figures annually on their own website and on a specific government website:

• Gender pay gap (mean and median averages)
• Gender bonus gap (mean and median averages)
• Proportion of men and women receiving bonuses
• Proportion of men and women in each quartile of the organisations’ pay structure.

Key points

• An employer must comply with the regulations for any year where they have a ‘headcount’ of 250 or more employees on 5 April (where the private and voluntary sector regulations apply) and 31 March (where the public sector regulations apply), but employers of all sizes should consider the advantages of doing so voluntarily.
• A wider definition of who counts as an employee is used here (from the Equality Act 2010). This means that workers are included, as well as some self-employed people. Agency workers are included, but counted by the agency providing them.
• Gender pay reporting is a different requirement to carrying out an equal pay audit.
• There are six calculations to carry out, and the results must be published on the employer’s website and the government website within 12 months. Where applicable, they must be confirmed by an appropriate person, such as a chief executive.
• Employers have the option to provide a narrative with their calculations. This should generally explain the reasons for the results and give details about actions that are being taken to reduce or eliminate the gender pay gap.
• While the regulations for the public, private and voluntary sectors are near identical, and the calculations are directly comparable, the public sector regulations also take into account the public sector equality duty.

Action required

We would recommend that all large employers take action as soon as possible to ensure their HR and Finance team are aware of the new regulations. This will then allow the organisation to consider:

• How easily the gender gap pay figures can be calculated / reported, and any steps that can be taken to make this easier
• The implications of the disclosure of the figures as they will be available to the public.

In order to consider the above we would recommend that employers who will be affected prepare ‘mock’ figures for the 2016 calendar year to understand what these show, and whether there are any strategic or planning issues to be considered in advance of the first year of actual reporting.

Blog written by: Ben Bradley