TIMES UP – have you published your gender pay gap? How sound is your data?

All organisations employing 250 people or more should have published their gender pay gap.  But some have filed mathematically impossible figures. Others have filed figures that look suspect. Have you published your gender pay gap? How sound is your data?

By 30 March 2018 for public sector organisations and 4 April 2018 for businesses and charities, all organisations that employ 250 people or more should have published their gender pay gap.

The intention is that reporting on gender pay gaps will help organisations to:

• identify issues, and
• track improvements over time, and
• provide employees with useful information on their workplaces. 

But questions have been raised about the quality of some of the data being filed, some companies having entered zeros in all fields, reported mathematically impossible bonus gaps and removed key workers.

In one case figures for three different companies were filed by the same HR manager with the exact same figures, with no gender pay gap and an equal divide of men and women throughout the company. It is a legal requirement that company information is signed off at director level.

Other companies have filed mathematically impossible figures – at least 17 have reported a bonus gap of more than 100%. One company reported an hourly mean gender pay gap of 106.4%, implying that for every £100 earned by a man a woman would “pay” £6.40. A spokesperson at the company declined to comment.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in March 2018 published their enforcement strategy for publishing the gender pay gap. The document, ‘Enforcing the gender pay gap regulations’ explains the range of activities to ensure compliance, their means of enforcement, and the statutory powers that they can use to enforce compliance. This includes the power to write to organisations that have filed questionable statistics and demand clarification.

You can download their EHRC enforcement strategy here

I have explained in detail what organisations need to publish in my previous equality news updates – in case you missed it, you can access these here