The legal requirement for organisations with 250 or more employees to report their gender pay gap data was abandoned last year on the 24th March 2020, due to the Covid-19 outbreak and the first national lockdown. Nevertheless, gender pay gap reporting will be going ahead in 2021, and new guidance has been released on how to address the impact of Covid-19 and furlough, for the purposes of providing the data.
Gender Pay Gap Reporting 2021
The deadline for gender pay gap reporting for public sector employers is the 30th March 2021, with a snapshot date of the 31st March 2020. For private sector employers and voluntary organisations, the deadline is the 4th April 2021, with a snapshot date of the 5th April 2020.
Nevertheless, as the snapshot dates post date the Covid-19 outbreak and occurred during the first national lockdown, new guidance was published by the Government on the 14th December 2020 to address the impact that Covid-19 and furlough will have had, to ensure that as far as possible, the data that is provided is as accurate as it can be.
The New Guidance
The key elements of the new guidance are as follows:-
- Furloughed staff must be included in the headcount for the snapshot date, when calculating the total number of employees, and whether or not the organisation had at least 250 employees and is therefore required to report their gender pay gap data. Accordingly, should an organisation have had 500 employees on the snapshot date, then they would be required to report their data, even if 475 of the employees were furloughed on that date.
- When making the necessary gender pay gap and quartile pay band calculations, only those employees in receipt of their full pay must be included, except when making the bonus related calculations. Hence, those on furlough whose pay was not fully topped up by their employer, are treated as being on 'leave' and are excluded from the calculations (except in relation to the gender bonus gap calculations).
The Bigger Picture
A range of research over the last year has highlighted the fact that female employees have been more adversely affected by the economic impact of Covid-19, than male workers. For instance:-
- A third more women than men proportionately worked in sectors that were completely shut down during the various lockdowns (e.g. hospitality, non-food retail, the arts, etc)
- Whilst 75% of men on furlough had their pay topped up by their employer, just 65% of women had their pay topped up, according to research carried out by the Observer.
- According to research carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), "mothers are 23% more likely than fathers to have lost their jobs....., [mothers] in paid work prior to the lockdown....are 47% more likely than fathers to have permanently lost their job or quit....., mothers who are still doing paid work have reduced their paid working hours substantially and by more than fathers...., [and] mothers are also far more likely to be interrupted [(e.g. childcare)] during paid working hours than fathers."
The Current Position On Reporting
As at the 7th February 2021, just 451 organisations have submitted their gender pay gap data thus far, of the roughly 11,000 that it is anticipated will be required to report.
Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting
Ethnicity pay gap reporting is not currently mandatory. However, the number of employers who voluntarily collect ethnicity pay gap data has increased from just 5% in 2018, to 23% in 2020, an increase of 18% in 2 years.
A Government consultation on ethnicity pay gap reporting closed way back in January 2019, but no outcome has ever been published. Nevertheless, a cross-government commission (the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities), overseen by Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, was launched in July 2020 to examine inequality across the board, including in the work place. The commission provided an update at the end of last year, and is due to report at some point in February 2021.
