Gender pay gap reporting was introduced in order to tackle and discourage differences in pay between men and women in organisations. The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 took effect from 6th April 2017, requiring organisations to take a ‘snapshot’ of their gender pay data. Organisations had a further 12 months in which to analyse and publish that data, by April 2018 at the latest.
Since then, this has been an annual requirement for organisations with 250 members of staff or more, enabling them to demonstrate if they had seen any changes in a gender pay gap and, crucially, allow them to show what they’ve done to work towards this. However, all of this changed in 2020, with the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic leading to the government pausing the lawful need to do Therefore organisations did not have to publish a report in 2020, however the government has now confirmed that they will need to do so in 2021.
Guidance has been released from the government on how this will work, this is summarised below.
The law will work in the same way as it has done previously, but the impact of the coronavirus will be felt. The ‘snapshot’ date that employers in the private sector will need to focus on is 5th April 2020, which was just after the first lockdown was implemented and the original furlough scheme had started to be rolled out.
Normal rules on producing a report dictate that employees do not need to be included in the ‘reporting pool’ if they were not on full pay on the ‘snapshot’ date. This means that any member of staff who was furloughed, and who did not have their pay topped up to 100%, can be discounted from the report for the purposes of hourly pay calculations. The knock-on effect is that the reporting pool could be significantly reduced as a result; the results it produces may therefore show an increase, or decrease, in the gap that is not representative of the real situation.
That said, furloughed staff should still be included in any calculations relating to bonus pay, regardless of whether their salary was topped up or not.
Organisations should ensure that any report they produce is combined with a detailed explanation of the figures; if there is a substantial change, they should explain that this is as a result of the number of staff on furlough and/or the redundancies they have had to make due to coronavirus and steps the organisation had to take in 2020.
Another key issue to bear in mind is the need to have a least 250 members of staff in producing a report. Organisations may have reduced their staffing numbers throughout 2020 and therefore may believe that they are no longer required to produce a report. However, they should note that the key date is 5th April 2020. If on that date they did meet the criteria to produce a report, they will still need to do so. Again, a staffing reduction may have an impact on the figures, so this should also be clearly explained.
Furloughed staff should be taken into account when considering staffing numbers, regardless of whether their salaries were reduced or not.
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