Gender Pay Gap Reporting 2019 – What It Means For Employers
The gender pay gap is big news and businesses are under increasing pressure from the Government, and society at large, to address gender imbalances when it comes to pay.
April 2018 saw the introduction of Gender Pay Gap Reporting. Since then, businesses over a certain size have been legally obliged to publish data related to gender and pay.
The deadline for this year’s gender pay gap reporting is April 4th. In this post, we take a look at what the gender pay gap is, who the legislation applies to, and what kind of information employers in the UK need to provide.
What is the gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap refers to the difference between the average amount of money men and women earn per hour.
The current gender pay gap in the UK stands at 18.4%. Men in the UK earn on average 18.4% more than women for every hour they work. In addition, 9 out of every 10 women work for an organisation where men earn more per hour than women.
Does the legislation apply to my business?
The legislation remains unchanged from last year. Since April 2018, all employers in the UK with 250 employees or more have to publish their gender pay gap once a year.
If you employ more than 250 employees, it applies to your business regardless of the industry sector you work in. This includes private sector and listed companies, voluntary sector companies and public sector organisations.
If you employ fewer than 250 employees, then you do not currently have to report – though you can still submit a report or measure your data using the same metrics.
What gender pay gap information needs to be reported?
Businesses need to report their data on the government website which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/report-gender-pay-gap-data.
Businesses are required to gather the following data:
• mean gender pay gap in hourly pay
• median gender pay gap in hourly pay
• mean bonus gender pay gap
• median bonus gender pay gap
• proportion of males and females receiving a bonus payment
• proportion of males and females in each pay quartile
All this information can be gathered from the company payroll and full details on the best way of calculating this data can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gender-pay-gap-reporting-make-your-calculations.
What is the deadline for reporting?
The deadline for 2019 depends on the type of organisation:
• Public sector employers – March 31st
• Private and voluntary sector employers – April 4th
Organisations that miss this deadline may face enforcement/penalties from the Equality and Human Rights Commission – as set out in: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/gender-pay-gap-enforcing-the-regulations-march-2018.pdf.
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