The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 introduce mandatory gender pay gap reporting on an annual basis for private and voluntary sector employers with 250 or more employees.
Employers will be required to compute and report on the difference in pay between ‘relevant’ male and female employees on an annual basis using data from a specific pay period that contains the relevant ‘snapshot’ date – the first of which is 5 April 2017. Employers then have 12 months beginning with the relevant date in which to publish the information – i.e. the first report will be due no later than 4 April 2018.
The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and the Government Equalities Office have published guidance and fact sheets on this topic to assist employers in complying with their gender pay gap reporting obligations. These can be found here.
The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 extend the requirement to report on the gender pay gap to public sector employers. The Regulations are being introduced as part of the existing public sector equality duty and the first snapshot date for the collection of data is 31 March 2017. Public sector employers must therefore publish their first gender pay gap information no later than 30 March 2018.
To avoid claims of sex discrimination, all employers are advised to take pay equality seriously and take remedial action where a significant pay gap is found to exist.