The British government has made public a preliminary consultation of its draft of mandatory gender pay reporting in companies. The regulation applies to all organizations with more than 250 employees and will come into effect in 2016. These employers will be required to disclose their employee salaries so that it is possible to compare the earnings of men and women.
It will be an extension of the Equality Act of 2010 which, in Article 78, enables the government to introduce regulatory measures that encourage employers to disclose information on the salaries of employees in order to discover whether there are differences in pay between men and women.
What will it look like?
The government is asking for suggestions, via the published consultation report and this website, on the format of the gender pay reports. There are three options:
- a statistical summary that will compare the average salaries of men and women, in a company, as a percentage,
- separate numbers for employees working full time and part time,
- differences in the average salaries by job type or grade.
Employers will also be given the opportunity to comment on the wider ramifications of these numbers, the reasons for differences and possible corrective actions. It is necessary to quantify the costs, to employers, associated with the analysis and publication of the information as well as to define possible risks. There is also the question of where and how often the numbers should be published. It probably will be once a year. The public consultation closes on Sept. 6, 2015.
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