April 2018 Newsletter – Education sector

It’s April and to help you get cracking after the egg-citement of the Easter holidays (for some) or just the warm weather (for all) we’ve hunted out the most up to date HR/Employment Law news for you. This includes reviewing the aftermath of the gender pay gap reporting deadline and updating you on guidance on the imminent general data protection regulation, taxation of termination payments, agency workers and return to work programmes.

Our case update this month focuses on shared parental leave pay and whether an expectation of long working hours needs to be adjusted for disabled employees or lead to disability discrimination.

What we’ve been doing in the Education sector recently…

Well done on all (hopefully!) getting your GPG stats reported. It may have been something of a surprise to suddenly realise that your 2018 stats (for reporting by March 2019) have now already ‘crystallised’, since they are based on your March 2018 payroll. If you have a higher-than-comfortable GPG and want to do something about it, you now have only 11 months left before your 2019 stats (for reporting by March 2020) crystallise. A quick check recently suggested that the average median GPG for every “college” which reported was 16%.

While the ways to reduce your GPG are numerous and will depend to an extent on your organisation’s particular circumstances, it is undeniable that having a decent Job Evaluation scheme in place is critical to ensuring that at least you can tick equal pay risks off your worry list. However, traditional public sector JE schemes are not suitable, as the many successful equal pay claims against local authorities over the last few years have demonstrated; because these schemes tend to value traditionally ‘male’ activities and responsibilities more highly than traditionally ‘female’ factors. Putting in place a modern, fit-for-purpose JE scheme is the answer, and I am pleased to say that we have sourced a very suitable JE scheme and arranged with its developer for us to make it available to our college clients at a very reasonable price. If you’d like to know more, please just give me a call on 0117 325 0921.

Luke Menzies
Director, Barrister and Solicitor
email Luke or call 0117 325 0921

• Government reforms (1): Gender Pay Gap reporting – the aftermath
• Government reforms (2): Data protection – GDPR guidance
• Government reforms (3): Taxation of termination payments
• Guidance: ACAS & Government: 1. ACAS Guidance on Agency Workers
• Guidance: ACAS & Government : 2. Government Equalities Office (GEO) advice on return to work programmes
• Case update (1):  Sex discrimination and shared parental leave pay
• Case update (2): Disability discrimination – long working hours