Gender Pay Gap reporting: what now?

Almost every newspaper, news feed and business journal reported on the Gender Pay Gap last week. But what will happen now? Will anything change?

The Regulations have succeeded in highlighting the different business’ structure and seniority and salary of women within those businesses. But most importantly the issue of equal pay has come under scrutiny. Employees want to know that they are receiving equal pay for equal work and this is resulting in more open discussion within those businesses.

What now? Businesses need to examine their pay review processes, ensure tangible measures are in place so that the process is transparent and fair and ensure that managers are trained to recognise their own bias. Reviews should be calibrated so that fairness can be demonstrated.

Ultimately, more senior managers need to consider diversity and inclusion, the challenges that these issues pose in the workplace and their plans for addressing them. Without this consideration, nothing will change and gap will not close in large businesses.

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, has suggested that in addition to gender pay gap reporting, companies and public organisations will have to move towards reporting pay gap information by ethnicity, age and job grade and this is likely to mean changes occurring in 2019 onwards.