Gender pay gap reporting begins

A new law is being introduced that will require all relevant employers in the public, private and voluntary sector with 250 or more employees to publish gender pay gap information by reporting the percentage differences in pay between their male and female employees. Employers must release information relating to employee pay, bonus pay and the number of men and woman in each quartile of the organisations pay distribution. Employers will be required to take a data snapshot of their pay data on 5 April 2017 (for private and voluntary sector) and report on specific calculations by 4 April 2018 and 31 March for public sector organisations. Employers are required to publish the report on their website and also on a government sponsored website.

The Statistics

In recent years the gender pay gap has seen an ongoing downward trend in the UK. Here we have a look at the figures from the most recent years:

This has been the lowest gender pay gap since 1997, when the gap for all employees was 27.5%. The composition of the male and female employee workforces are quite different, with more women working part-time than men, 41% and 12% respectively.

The gender pay gap also varies by occupation, for example:

• Skilled trade’s occupations: 25.1%
• Managers, directors and senior officials: 18.9%
• Associate professional and technical occupations: 11.2%
• Caring, leisure and other service occupations: 8.1%
• Sales and customer service occupations: 3.9%

The new legislation will lead to greater transparency and drive employer action to reduce the gender pay gap. As an employer if you are required to publish gender pay gap information you have 12 months to publish the information, meaning that first publication will be required in or before April 2018.

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