Blog: Happy Equal Pay Day!

Today, Friday 10th November is apparently 2017’s ‘Equal Pay Day’, symbolising the day of the year on which the average woman stops being paid, in comparison with the average man, if they both work for the whole year – based on this year’s gender pay gap. Now I must admit there are a couple of niggles I have with this concept. I’m still a nerdy lawyer at heart. First, a purely mathematical one. With the 2017 gender pay gap currently at 18.1%, my maths suggests that this year’s Equal Pay Day should actually be 25th October, if we’re going to have one this year. And then there’s the fact that the day is meant to be highlighting the gender pay gap, but goes and confuses things by misusing the phrase ‘equal pay’, which is an entirely separate concept and not at all the same as the gender pay gap. It won’t be the first time that marketing folks got hold of slightly the wrong end of the stick, but admittedly it’s a catchy name.

Never mind – the point is still worth making. It also works well to look at it another way, and say that the average woman doesn’t get paid for working on a Friday. Perhaps we could start calling Fridays “Freedays”. Geddit?

Another date worth dwelling on is 4 November, four days ago. This marked the point at which private sector employers had only 5 months left to calculate, publish and report their gender pay gaps if they have 250 or more employees. Time is ticking by!

If you’re one of these large employers who have not yet tackled your GPG calculations, bear in mind that although the Government suggested that it would take an employer only a couple of days to do the number-crunching, our own experience, having worked with many clients on this, is that it takes two days merely to locate all the pay data. It then takes another week or so to analyse the figures and finalise the calculations, and that’s if you know exactly what you’re doing.

If you would like any help with your GPG, just let me know. I’m working on little else at present.

In the meantime, I wish you a happy Equal Pay Day, a happy Freeday (might that catch on?) and leave you with the final thought that there are only 45 sleeps until Christmas.

Luke Menzies

Director

email Luke or call 0117 325 0921