Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Gender pay gapGenderLatest NewsPay & benefits

How gender pay gap sums should be made more accurate

by Ashleigh Webber 15 Apr 2019
by Ashleigh Webber 15 Apr 2019 Image: Philip Toscano/PA Wire/PA Images
Image: Philip Toscano/PA Wire/PA Images

Many of the errors in employers’ gender pay gap reports could be avoided if the government adopted simpler calculation methods and supported HR professionals to access statistical skills, according to a statistician body.

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) said the current requirements were flawed and should be refined to develop a higher standard of gender pay gap reporting, which would act as a template for other countries to adopt.

Gender pay gap reporting

Risk of errors high in pay gap reporting

The 2018 gender pay gap: grounds for optimism?

Gender pay gap: little progress made in second year

Over a third of gender pay gap could be down to bias

It set out 10 recommendations which it said would create a clearer, more consistent and more accurate system for gender pay gap calculations.

Earlier this month analytics firm Concentra estimated that one in six organisations had misreported their 2018 numbers.

It suggested that gender pay data should be presented in pounds and pence, rather than percentages, to remove ambiguity and provide more “intuitive” information.

Currently, employers are asked to calculate their median pay gap in percentage terms which can be done in a number of ways. This, the RSS said, led to inconsistent results being presented.

“To its credit, the government is beginning to move in the right direction, with the data now being presented primarily in terms of pounds and pence and only secondarily as percentages. However, we believe that clarity could be further increased, and ambiguity reduced, if percentages were no longer used and all reporting was done solely on a pounds/pence basis,” the RSS noted.

Guidance needs rethinking

Government guidance also needed improving to reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation. Employers are instructed to “find the hourly pay rate that is in the middle of the range”, which the RSS said led to the incorrect median calculation being submitted. It recommended that the precision of government guidance should be improved and instructions are revised.

D&I opportunities currently on PT Jobs

More D&I jobs

The RSS also noted that the legislation effectively asked HR professionals to take on statistical tasks that they might not have the skills to carry out. It suggested that the government should consider how it can help employers access the necessary statistical skills through engaging consultant statisticians or developing in-house skills among HR teams, for example.

“The burden is particularly onerous in organisations which do not employ any statisticians, on whom their HR colleagues can draw,” it added.

Other recommendations included:

  • introducing free online calculators with built-in “sanity checks” to prevent statistically implausible entries
  • requiring employers to calculate their pay gap by quartile to provide a more accurate picture of the difference in male and female pay
  • requiring organisations to publish comparative data to show how their pay gap has changed from one year to the next
  • flagging up organisations which employ fewer than 100 women to prevent them from being “unjustly accused of discriminating against women when they have merely been victims of chance”
  • keep the current reporting threshold at 250 employees, contrary to calls for the threshold to be reduced.

The latest round of gender pay gap reporting revealed that almost eight in 10 organisations paid men more than women, on average, in 2018. The median gender pay gap changed only marginally from 9.2% in 2017 to 9.6% last year.

RSS’s vice-president for external affairs, Professor Jen Rogers, said: “We warmly welcomed the government’s original decision to introduce gender pay gap reporting. We also recognise the important improvements that it has since made.

“But we would urge it to go further and faster. I hope it will heed RSS’s 10 recommendations and turn a system that’s great in principle into one that’s equally impressive in practice.”

Ashleigh Webber
Ashleigh Webber

Ashleigh is editor at OHW+ and part of the Personnel Today editorial team. Prior to joining Personnel Today in 2018, she covered the road transport sector for Commercial Motor and Motor Transport.

previous post
Organisations should improve support for bereaved staff, research suggests
next post
City firm IFM settles sexual harassment case

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

You may also like

Gender pensions gap: half of women expect to...

9 May 2022

Twice as many men as women hold company...

3 May 2022

Disability pay gap wider than in 2014

29 Apr 2022

Avoid salary history questions in recruitment, guide urges

29 Apr 2022

Hundreds left to report as 2022 gender pay...

5 Apr 2022

Top 10 HR questions March 2022: is long...

1 Apr 2022

Public sector organisations yet to report as gender...

1 Apr 2022

Half yet to publish as gender pay gap...

29 Mar 2022

April 2022 employment law changes: six tasks for...

14 Mar 2022

International Women’s Day: Is the gender pay gap...

9 Mar 2022
  • What it really means to be mentally fit PROMOTED | What is mental fitness...Read more
  • How music can help to ease anxiety at work PROMOTED | A lot has happened since March 2020, hasn’t it?...Read more
  • Why now is the time to plug the unhealthy gap PROMOTED | We’ve all heard the term ‘health is wealth’...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+