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Course Talk: Gender Pay Gap Reporting

Posted on 14 February 2017SharePrint

HR and Payroll people begin to understand the serious impact of Gender Pay Gap Reporting

The gender pay gap is one of the key issues that needs to be addressed in UK workplaces - with the current gap at approximately 19%. In a bid to highlight the differences and put pressure on organisations to reduce the gap, the government is introducing brand new Gender Pay Gap Reporting legislation. This will require employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year showing how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees. The legislation comes into force in April this year and businesses need to ensure they fully understand the significant new requirements.

Helping you prepare for the changes...

I was delighted to recently attend the first presentation of 'Gender Pay Gap Reporting - Are You Prepared?', a brand new half-day course which Kate Upcraft presented in London for UK Training. The course was intended to help people prepare for this new Regulation and the delegates I spoke to found it incredibly helpful, especially in the absence of formal Government guidance.

All the delegates were surprised by the impact that the Regulations would have on their respective departments. The following issues were highlighted as particular concerns:

  • The amount of work that payroll staff will have to do manually, as no software providers are in a position to roll out support for the new requirements.
  • The difficulty for some companies that employ different types of workers around or outside Great Britain to determine whether they meet the threshold or not.
  • The many different terms used by employers to describe different types of pay. Trying to decide what is ordinary pay, bonus pay or benefits-in-kind can be very confusing and lead to incorrect reporting.

Who attended the course?

The course was attended by a real mix of people from payroll, HR and finance departments. The Regulations affect organisations that have more than 250 workers, such as the travel firm that sent two delegates on the day. But it also affects smaller organisations that use a large number of contract workers, such as the two private schools who were also in attendance.

How did the presenter use her experience to help the attendees?

Kate's vast experience was invaluable, as she was able to clearly explain the regulation and help people understand its likely impact on their own organisations. Having helped other large organisations roll out compliance programmes with previous Regulations, she was able to highlight where things had gone wrong and how that can be avoided. She was also able to call on her close contacts with HMRC and the software development community to give an insight into what is happening that we were privileged to share.

Other features of the course...

Once Kate had given the background and reasoning to the Regulations, she went on to explain the various important definitions. This generated a lot of discussion among delegates who were keen to establish how many workers they had in the various parts of the UK and how their own types of remuneration and rewards fell into the new definitions. The one-to-one advice that Kate was able to give on these points was highly valued by all attendees.

Another aspect of the course which delegates really appreciated was the provision of a unique Action Plan, which they could take away and complete when they got back to the office. Kate carefully talked everyone through the plan and gave useful examples of what needed to be done for each point.

There were also clear instructions on what calculations to use to arrive at the mean and median gender pay gaps and strong guidance on completing a compelling narrative to support the results.

When is this course being presented again?

New dates for this course are already in the calendar up to November. However it is advisable to book early as this is already a major training requirement for employers with more than 250 workers and places are likely to fill up. The next three presentations are on 22nd March in Birmingham, 28th March in London and 20th April in Manchester.

You can book places by going to this page, calling us on 0800 435 772 or by simply replying to this email.


Article written by: Paul Murphy, UK Training (Worldwide) Limited

 

UK Training