Gender pay gap to be laid bare

“YOU can’t have true opportunity without equality”

Those were the words of the then Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2015 when announcing new measures aimed at eradicating gender inequality in the workplace. On the December 6 this year we saw the final form regulations that will look to affect that message – the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.

The regulations will come into force on April 6, 2017. They will place a mandatory obligation on private and voluntary sector bosses employing 250 or more staff to publish information about the gender pay gap in their organisation.

Employees will include those under a contract of employment, a contract of apprenticeship and a contract personally to perform work, which will cover independent contractors.

However, employers do not have to include data relating to those individuals engaged on a contract personally to do work if they do not have the relevant data and it is not reasonably practicable to obtain it.

Employers are required to publish the following information:

The difference in the mean and median pay of male and female employees;

The difference in the mean and median bonus pay of male and female employees;

The proportions of male and female employees who were paid a bonus in the previous year; and

The numbers of male and female employees employed in quartile pay bands.

Pay is defined as gross pay before deductions at source and does not include overtime or benefits in kind.

The obligation to report this data is within a year of the snapshot date, being April 5 of each year.

Individuals receiving less than full pay as a result of being on leave during the pay period that includes the snapshot date are to be excluded from the calculations.

The results must be published on employers’ websites for at least three years and be accompanied by a written statement of accuracy, signed by a director or equivalent. Robert Forsyth is a Senior

Associate at DLA Piper Sponsored Column