Gender pay rules: what you need to know

A final version of the obligations is yet to be published but the government originally indicated that it would come into force on October 1 2016, requiring employers to publish reports from April 2018.

This date is expected to be postponed, but employers will still need to collect data from April 2017 to April 2018.

The aim of the regulations is to look at the distribution of women and men across the workforce.

Shirley Hall, partner and employment law expert at Eversheds, said: “Manufacturers should be looking at doing a dummy run in terms of using the pay data from April and see what those statistics look like.”​

The government has steered clear of penalising through fines companies that come out negatively in the data, but it is considering publishing the data on a sectoral basis, as a way of ‘naming and shaming’ firms.

Gender gap​

The regulations are not looking at equal pay, which is covered by the Equal Pay Act, but will consider the gender gap.

This could highlight that there is a lack of women on company boards as well as indicating where there might be a skills shortage of women in areas such as engineering, which have higher salaries.

It might also flag up discrepancies in the food and drink sector in particular, where there could be a higher number of part-time female workers, said Hall.

“Employers are best advised to understand how their pay gaps are arising and satisfy themselves that there are not any equal pay issues there – and if there are, address them,”​ she warned.

“The key thing for food and drink employers is that they need to be thinking what these statistics will be telling people and how they can put it into sector context.”​

Impact of people reading the data​

Hall urged employers to consider the impact of people reading the data. It could mean that employees decide to work for employers that have a lower gender gap.

She advised food and drink firms to get their human resources and legal departments to look at the impact of the regulations.

Hall said they should understand what factors drive any gender pay gap and how it fits into the wider food and drink sector.

“It is a female talent issue potentially,”​ she said. It could also hit staff morale and retention internally, she warned.

“Just seeing a broad statistic does not necessarily say what it means. But without any narrative it is in danger of giving an impression of the organisation,”​ she added.