Taking a proactive approach to new equal pay laws

If I could give one piece of advice to any business over the next 12 months it would be this: review your pay structure and conduct an equal pay audit.

From April 2017, businesses with more than 250 employees will be obliged to begin publishing information about gender pay gap reporting. We await the fine detail on this; but I believe it is the ideal trigger for businesses to take a look at their pay structures, regardless of size.

Now is the time to conduct an audit of the pay structures and policies to assess any potential liability and to address that liability and/or differential as soon as possible. Gender pay gap reporting, and associated press coverage will raise awareness of potential equal pay claims; and anecdotally, the team at Forbes have certainly seen a significant increase in the number of enquiries in this area over the last 12 months.