Creu Prydain Decach
1. Nearly 40 years after the Equal Pay Act, the gender pay gap is 22.6%. The gap is higher in the private sector where around 80% of all employees work. Our own inquiry into the financial services sector has revealed gender pay gaps of up to 60% in annual gross pay and as much as 79% in annual incentive (bonus) pay. Clearly we can only tackle the pay gap if we can see it and measure it.
2. It is the Commission's belief that most employers appreciate the need for progress and recognise that action to deliver equality for all their employees is part of being a successful, responsible and respected employer. Shareholders, consumers and staff are demanding ever more transparency from the companies they have a stake in, use, and work for. It's essential we work with businesses on the best ways to promote change using the most innovative approaches to employment and retaining and promoting the most talented without any artificial barriers.
3. The Equality Bill contains a reserve power enabling regulations requiring mandatory reporting of information about their gender pay gap by private and voluntary sector employers with 250 or more employees. We believe that if businesses start to embrace greater transparency on pay, progress on challenging patterns of pay inequality will follow naturally, thereby avoiding the need for Ministers to consider new regulation.
4. We also recognise that we have a key role to play in helping to develop a reporting framework which suits different organisational structures and builds on the excellent work that is already in place in many businesses, but also takes account of the fact that some organisations will have little experience of reporting on equality issues. In order to help achieve this, the Commission is inviting employers to tell us about any work they are doing to promote gender pay transparency. This may range from work they are doing to collect pay and employment data to any experience they may have of carrying out an equal pay review and job evaluation scheme. We particularly want to know what works and what doesn't, so we are urging employers to describe any barriers or opportunities they may face or have overcome in engaging in this work, as well as any information about the nature of their business which might be relevant.
5. Alongside the above we are seeking views on both the quantitative and qualitative measures which employers could use. We are inviting views on:
6. As we recognise that it may not be possible to come up with a ‘one size fits all' approach, we are also asking for views on the possibility of providing employers with a range of reporting options, including any or all of those outlined above, plus any others that are deemed to be helpful, so that they could choose to report in the way best suited to their circumstances.
7. In addition we are asking for input on publication of information about the gender pay gap. We know that this is a matter of particular concern to employers and we would like to understand what those concerns are and how those who do publish data go about doing so.
8. Government is committed to improving transparency in all sectors, and as part of the consultation on the specific duties underpinning the Single Equality Duty the Government Equalities Office is consulting on specific duties for public bodies to report their gender pay gap and proposing they use the single figure (comprising both full-time and part-time pay) to measure the overall pay gap in an organisation.