Gender pay gap reporting explained

By Roger Spence, head of employment law, Harrison Drury.

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women.

Recently introduced legislation requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish their calculations annually, showing how large the pay gap is between male and female employees.

There are two sets of regulations and deadlines.

The first is for large private and voluntary organisations and the deadline to report is 4 April 2018. The second is mainly for the public sector and this has a deadline of 30 March 2018.

The figures must be calculated using the data from the ‘snapshot period’ of the previous 12 months.

There are six calculations to be reported and published:

the mean and median gender pay gap in hourly pay
the mean and median bonus gender pay gap
the proportion of males and females receiving a bonus payment
and the proportion of males and females in each pay quartile.

These results will need to be published on the employer’s website – and must be kept online and be publicly available for three years, and, the government website – GOV.UK. They should also be accompanied by a written statement from the appropriate person, such as the CEO.

If your organisation has less than 250 employees, you can voluntarily publish a gender pay gap report, but you are not obliged to do so.Harrison Drury has a team of employment experts on hand to advise you through the gender pay gap reporting process.