Reward insight
It may be equal but is it fair?
Helen HargreavesMSC FCIPPdip, CIPP associate director of policy, discusses the issues, research, findings, and developments
“Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man’s true worth.” I’m sure there will be few if any of us who disagree with these sentiments expressed by Criss Jami, author of Killosophy , but for many of us the reality is still quite different. Equal pay versus pay disparity Equal pay means that men and women in the same employment performing equal work must receive equal pay, as set out in the Equality Act 2010. It’s the law, and employers must abide by it. This applies not just for salary, but to all contractual terms and conditions of employment, such as holiday entitlement, bonuses, pay and reward schemes, pension payments and other benefits. Leaving aside the debate over what constitutes equal work, the law is quite clear. Pay disparity, or to be more specific in terms of men and women, the gender pay gap, is the measure of the difference between men’s and women’s average earnings. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings and, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the gender pay gap for all employees in 2018 stood at 17.9% down from 18.4% in 2017. Changes to the Equality Act came
into force in April 2017, meaning that employers with more than 250 employees are legally required to report their gender pay gap figures by the end of the financial year. Organisations employing fewer people than this are not legally required to report their gender pay gaps, but some smaller firms have started to do so. As well as reporting the actual ...statement confirming that the calculations numbers, employers must also provide a written statement confirming that the calculations are accurate and provide a narrative to explain why a gender pay gap is present and what the organisation intends to do to close it. But even though the second round of mandatory reporting for organisations with more than 250 employees has passed, with data showing that the gap has closed slightly, complaints of inequality and disappointment at a lack of progress are back in the headlines. Second time around, employers may find explanations are harder to come by. are accurate and provide a narrative...
Just because a gender pay gap exists in an organisation doesn’t necessarily mean that unlawful discrimination is taking place. A gender pay gap can be caused by a range of factors such as having fewer women in senior or more high-earning roles or more women working part-time. But even if an organisation can explain the reason behind its gender pay gap, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t examine their results to see what they can do to address it. An approach taken on board by the BBC. Having received much adverse publicity for the salaries paid to high profile male and female presenters, the BBC has published its 2019 gender pay report well ahead of the 30 March 2020 deadline. The organisation says that its gender pay gap comes from having too few women employed in senior roles and the fact that more women than men are in the organisation’s lowest pay quartile; it believes that 6.2% of its median gender pay gap is driven by these structural concerns. Currently, 43.8% of leadership roles are held by women. But the BBC says it is committed to closing its pay gap by the end of 2020 and delivering a gender pay gap of 3% or less in each of the BBC’s career level bands.
It’s not just gender Gender is only one area where pay
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 54 | October 2019
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