Gender pay gaps

Under a new legal requirement in force from April 2017, UK companies with 250 or more employees have to publish their gender pay gaps by April 2018.

The pay gap is the percentage difference between average hourly earnings for men and women. Across the UK men earned 18.1% more than women in April 2016 according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This figure is calculated on a 1% sample of employees' jobs. It takes the median for men and women, which is the figure at the mid-point of the range of earnings.

The pay gap is not the same as equal pay which has been a legal requirement for 47 years. Equal pay is where men and women doing the same job should be paid the same.

About half of the UK workforce will be affected by the new reporting rules, which encompass 9,000 employers and more than 15 million employees.

By April 2018, large and mid-sized companies in the UK must:

• Publish their mean gender pay gap figures, which is produced by dividing the total payroll by the number of workers.
• Publish their median gender pay gap figures, which compares the pay of the man and woman who are at the mid-point of the company payroll.
• Publish the gender pay gaps for bonuses.

Publish the proportion of men and women in each quarter of the pay structure. The BBC recently published, for the first time, the pay of stars earning £150,000 and more. The figures reveal that about two-thirds of stars earning more than £150,000 are male, compared to one-third female. The list however, does not distinguish between people who are paid for doing multiple jobs within the BBC and those who are paid for just one. Commenting on the annual report, BBC director general Lord Hall has said the BBC gender pay gap across the organisation is 10%, compared with an 18% gap across the UK as a whole.

Comment

April 2018 is the final deadline for companies to publish their figures. Until then, it may take weeks or months for the UK's largest companies to publish the differences between what they pay men and women, due to the number of employees. If employers fail to comply by the April 2018 deadline, they will be contacted by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

At Frettens, all of our solicitors offer a free initial meeting or chat on the phone to answer your questions. If this article raises issues for you or your business, please call us on 01202 499255 and Paul or Kate will be happy to discuss it with you.