In the wake of the latest gender pay gap reporting deadlines, Oliver Varney, gender pay gap lead at the EHRC, discusses how the equality watchdog scrutinises the data submitted by GB employers with 250 employees or more.
At the Equality and Human Rights Commission, we play an important role in closing the gender pay gap across England, Wales and Scotland. As Britain’s equality regulator, we are responsible for enforcing the Gender Pay Gap Regulations by using a range of levers – including our formal enforcement powers – to ensure relevant employers publish their gender pay gap data.
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This data is crucial to help employers identify if and why pay gaps exist across their organisation, making it much easier for them to act and close the gaps within their workforce.
As the deadline for public, private and voluntary sector organisations to report their gender pay gap data for 2024-25 has recently passed, we will be watching closely to make sure that employers have submitted this information both on time and accurately. This isn’t just a voluntary requirement, it’s the law.
What is suspect data?
Suspect data can take many forms. Sometimes it may be malicious, where an employer may try and hide their pay gaps with false data, or it may be a genuine mistake made by the employer.
Regardless of the cause, publishing suspect data can have both legal and business impacts for employers, and some may not be clear about this.
How can suspect data be tackled?
Employers are responsible for ensuring that their data is accurate, whether they calculate it themselves or ask a third party to. There are some simple actions that every employer can take to reduce the likelihood of submitting inaccurate data.
These can include checking that:
- steps have not been missed during the calculations
- calculations have been completed in the correct order and with no typing errors
- the figures calculated match those entered on the UK government website, and other quality assurance processes have been implemented.
It is good practice to keep a record of the calculations that were made to reach the reported figures, so that a representative can explain them if asked. Relevant employers must ensure that an appropriate person – usually a Director or senior officer – signs and confirms the report’s accuracy on the government website.
How can you make the calculations?
Calculating this data can seem daunting, but there is extensive guidance available on the EHRC website. If you’re an employer, you need to provide the following data:
- mean (average) and median gender pay gap for hourly pay and bonus pay
- percentage of men and women in each hourly pay quarter
- percentage of men and women receiving bonus pay.
These figures are reported as whole percentages or rounded to one decimal place.
Now that the relevant deadlines for reporting have passed (30 March for most public sector employers and 4 April for private, voluntary and the rest of the public sector), we will scrutinise this year’s submissions and contact organisations that we believe may have published suspect data. This ongoing work is complex; if necessary, we may have to take stronger action against organisations that provide suspect data and do not take steps to rectify the problem.
This vital data is an important first step on the road to ensuring workplaces do not discriminate against female staff. Employers that publish robust data can then use it to inform what action they could take to eliminate pay gaps within their workplace.
We have developed a practical toolkit with the Chartered Institute of Management to help employers close their pay gaps. The UK government has also introduced the Employment Rights Bill. We expect this new legislation will make publication of gender equality action plans mandatory, so employers should get ahead of the game by ensuring that the data on which their action plans are based is accurate.
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