Gender Pay Gap Reporting
As you may have seen across the news, currently the gender pay gap is a very popular topic affecting a number of industries in the world. From Hollywood to Hartlebury, women in business are making their mark in their industries more than ever before.
You are likely to have read about how A-list stars like Reese Witherspoon are taking on Hollywood and currently making waves in the film industry with strong statements such as ‘We have to do our part to change the idea that a woman with passion and ambition is out only for herself’. Gender equality is a key topic and it seems that upcoming legislation is evolving to meet changing expectations within the workplace.
Gender pay gap reporting is one of the many steps towards equality in the work place and has been introduced to ensure there is no significant cumulative impact on a woman’s earning potential during her working life time. It is also aimed to give more transparency about gender pay difference, thus increasing the chances of action taking place. Gender pay gap reporting will be enforced from April 2018, making it compulsory for businesses with 250 employees or more to publish their gender pay gap figures to both their own public-facing company website and to the government online.
Organisations must publish their median and mean gender pay gap figures and the proportion of men and women in each quartile of the pay structure. Pay gap reporting must also include basic pay, allowances, paid leave, bonus pay and pay for piecework.
So how does this affect your company? You may be worried that this regulation may affect recruitment and company credibility, however companies are able to determine how they would like to publish their reporting - some may choose to publish a statement, authorised by an appropriate senior within the organisation.
If you work in a finance department, you’re likely to be considering how your business will gather the gender pay gap information most efficiently from your payroll system. Some systems may have specific reporting tools to enable you to find the information you need. Pegasus Opera 3 Payroll contains an extensive range of reports including End-of-Year reports, departmental reporting and much more. Pegasus now have new reporting available to allow you to access your payroll data, analyse the data and produce the relevant reports easily to assist with the compulsory gender pay gap reporting. The Opera 3 payroll reporting tool also allows you to print reports and export the data in to Excel for additional data manipulation.
The gender pay gap ‘Snapshot Date’ is the date that employers must gather the information from in order to report their gender pay gap. This date is March 31st for public authorities and April 5th for all other employers. To be prepared, businesses should review the reliability of their payroll system and start to collate this information on the correct dates to begin preparing a report, in which they can write a statement on their findings.
For more information on accounting and payroll systems, contact Minster on 01562 68211 or email sales@minstermicro.co.uk.