Beginning in 2018, companies that employ over 250 people will be required to make their gender pay gap publically available online.
The government, in a statement, said that any company that fails to address gender pay disparities would be highlighted in new league tables in hopes of driving progress.
Nicky Morgan, Women and Equalities Minister, said that in addition to forcing medium to large sized organisations to publish their gender pay and bonus pay gap detail annually, these companies will also have to publish how many women and men are in each pay range.
In an effort to highlight and measure where the gap actually falls across the United Kingdom, companies’ pay gaps will be ranked by sector, in a league table that will allow women to see where the gap is and is not being addressed. Morgan is calling on women across Britain to leverage this new reporting. She hopes that it will encourage women to demand more from their organisations while pushing them to recognise and reward women for their talent and skillsets.
Morgan also announced that a new £500,000 support package would be introduced in order to help companies implement the new regulations. Additionally, a new ministerial group will be set up to help evaluate how the government supports women in the workplace and targeted support will be provided for industries which are typically male dominated.
The latest ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings revealed the gender pay gap for median earnings of full-time and part-timers sits at just under 20% when combined. This is completely unchanged since 2014. If this pace continues, the TUC is predicting it will take almost 50 years for any kind of parity between the sexes.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said there is really no need to delay the reporting until 2018. O’Grady also feels that bosses should explain why the pay gap exists within their organisation, in addition to simply releasing the numbers.
Human resource experts hope this reporting will lead to a reduction in bias and introduce a whole new level of transparency.
