Gender Pay Gap – Ready to share?

S78 of the Equality Act 2010 will come into force on 22^nd August 2016. This section calls for Regulations to be made which require employers with more than 250 employees to publish details about the differences in pay between men and women. Employers will need to publish reports from April 2018. The gender pay gap Regulations were due to come into force on 1^st October 2016, however, a final version of the Regulations is yet to be published. As a result, it is now understood that the Regulations may not come into force until April 2017. Due to this delay in publishing a final version of the Regulations, employers will feel the strain of getting to grips with their obligations to comply with the Regulations as time will be reduced for employers to put procedures in place. It is hoped that, that while the implementation of the Regulations will be delayed, this will not stop the Government from publishing the final version as soon as possible in order to shed some light on the concerns some employers may have. There are currently gaps in the current draft version, which are confusing and causing disagreements between HR representatives and lawyers around what employers will actually be required to do. It is important to bear in mind that this Regulations will require employers to publish reports from April 2018. This means that we will have in total 19 months to prepare ourselves. Pay information between men and women will need to be based on data from a specific pay period every April, beginning in April 2017 and the bonus information will need to be based on the proceeding 12 month period. This gender pay reporting requirement only applies to private-sector employers, however, it is understood that the Government plans to extend the requirement to publish gender pay gap information to public-sector employers at the same time. Employers are keen to know as much as they can about these provisions in order to prepare for the new requirements as they are aware of the potential damage to their reputation if they fail to comply. For example, XpertHR’s annual HR salary survey has revealed that women in the HR profession on average earn 11% less than men. Such employers know that they are going to find it difficult to justify such data which clearly suggest that there is a gender pay gap. It is for this reason, the Government intends to push ahead its plans in order to eradicate gender pay inequality. We have previously written a blog giving guidance on complying with the Gender Pay Gap obligations. Please click here to see the article. We will also be discussing this topic in our upcoming Afternoon Update. Please email us for details.