‘Nearly half of employers are developing an action plan to tackle their gender pay gap’

Gender pay legislation is encouraging employers to do more work on tackling the reasons women are in lower paid jobs than men, according to a survey.

The survey of 288 employers by XpertHR shows just one in six employers (16.7%) said that having calculated and reported their gender pay gap, they were likely to take no further action.

The most likely action was conducting further analysis on pay differentials (65.6%), followed by developing an action plan to close the gap (45.8%).  Some 27.1% said they would review their recruitment processes and 21.9% will review their promotion processes. 17.7% said they would review pay levels for men and women. 

The survey notes that most employers are holding back on publishing their figures. More than one in four (26.5%) mid-sized companies (those with 250-999 employees) and more than half (51.5%) of larger companies (with 1,000+ employees) have already calculated their pay gaps but without yet making them public, according to the survey.

XpertHR content director Mark Crail said: “Employers face a huge risk to their reputations as fair and equal employers. Rather than leaving it until the last minute, they should be ensuring that their data is accurate, the calculations are in line with the legislation and that the reporting requirements can be met.  HR departments should use the next few weeks wisely to really understand their own organisation’s gender pay gap and to develop a clear message to employees and the outside world about why it exists and what they are going to do about it.”

Meanwhile, on the equal pay for equal work front, 70 MPs have signed a letter asking the Culture Secretary to intervene in the BBC equal pay case, asking for the corporation to allow female staff who have campaigned about equal pay to talk about the issue on air.

Meanwhile, calls are growing for an audit of gender pay gap reporting after it emerged a number of companies have altered their data several times since first filing it.

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