What’s all this about “Gender Pay Gap Reporting”?

We are a fairly small company, however we take on seasonal staff every year in April for the summer – we swell to around 300 employees (we normally have less than 100 for 9 months of the year), also most of our staff are part-time so our full-time equivalent staffing is never more than 200 – do we need to worry about Gender Pay Gap reporting which I believe only applies if we have over 250 staff?

Gender pay reporting legislation requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year showing how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees. Private and third sector employers (it’s slightly different for the public sector) who meet the criteria, must publish their figures for the previous year in April every year. The legislation took effect from 5 April 2017 so the first reporting date was 4 April 2018. The results must be published on the employer’s website and a Government website within 12 months. Where applicable, they must be confirmed by an appropriate person, such as the business owner or chief executive.

So does this apply to your circumstances? The legislation means that an employer must comply with the regulations for any year where they have a ‘headcount’ of 250 or more employees on 5 April. The headcount means that part-time staff (including any job-sharers) count as 1 person for these purposes. It must also include staff who might be defined as “workers” rather than employees – for example those on a zero-hours contract. Therefore based on these definitions it looks like your company may well fall within the legislation requirements to report your gender pay gap.

That being the case you will need to publish the following information:

1. average gender pay gap as a mean average
2. average gender pay gap as a median average
3. average bonus gender pay gap as a mean average
4. average bonus gender pay gap as a median average
5. proportion of males receiving a bonus payment and proportion of females receiving a bonus payment
6. proportion of males and females when divided into four groups ordered from lowest to highest pay.

Although it sounds quite onerous, it is likely that your payroll provider will be able to help you utilising payroll information, or if you do your own payroll you can download the information from your payroll system. Acas has provided detailed guidance on the calculations, and the Government website will walk you through these too.