Government reforms (1): Gender Pay Gap reporting – the aftermath

What do we already know?

Private and voluntary sector employers with 250 or more employees were required to publish a gender pay gap report by 4 April 2018.

We kept you up to date on these reporting requirements and how our Gender Pay Gap Audit service could help with this. For an overview of the reporting requirements see our February 2016 Newsletter Government reforms (2): Gender pay – mend the gap!

What’s new?

1. The results are out…

As of 5 April 2018:

• the median pay gap among all companies that reported by the deadline is 9.7%;
• 78% of companies pay men more than women;
• 14% pay women more than men; and
• 8% have reported no gender pay gap at all.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, men are paid more than women in every single industry sector, with construction representing the largest gap, followed by finance and insurance.

2. Enforcement action

It has been reported that over 1,500 employers failed to report their gender pay gap figures before the 4 April deadline.  Although we hope our updates helped you avoid being one of these employers (!), if you are then read on…

At the end of March 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published a policy (available here) setting out its approach to enforcing the gender pay gap regulations including:

• In 2018/19, the focus will be on employers who have not published any information rather than those who may have published data incorrectly; and
• The EHRC will initially seek an informal resolution by writing to the employer seeking compliance within 42 days of the past reporting year. Where the employer complies with those timescales, no further enforcement action will be taken.