What is the Gender Pay Gap?
The Gender Pay Gap is the widespread phenomenon of women earning less per hour than their male counterparts. In the UK, 8 out of 10 firms pay men more with an average pay gap of 9.8%.
In 2017 the Gender Pay Gap came to the forefront of news reporting, and since then companies across the UK and worldwide have strived to close the gap.
Where Does the Data Come From?
Previously, data about the difference between male and female earnings was difficult to obtain. Since 2017, the UK government has made it mandatory for any organisation which employs more than 250 people to disclose earnings across their organisation, including any existing Gender Pay Gap.
The information you will need to provide includes:
- Mean gender pay gap in hourly pay
- Median gender pay gap in hourly pay
- Mean bonus gender pay gap
- Median bonus gender pay gap
- Proportion of males and females receiving a bonus payment
- Proportion of males and females in each pay quartile
What Can I Do to Reduce my Company’s Gender Pay Gap?
Although there are reports that it will take 217 years to close the Gender Pay Gap, there are steps that your company can take:
- Do Your Research
- Conduct a review of your payroll to work out if there is a Gender Pay Gap within your organisation, and where it lies
- Identify key roles where there is a difference in pay, or an imbalance in employees from either gender
- Seek Assistance
- With a difficult topic such as this, the next step should be to seek expert advice on effectively making changes – otherwise you could waste time and money on a solution does not resolve the problem
- If you would rather not pay for a 1-1 session with an expert, attend a relevant seminar (such as our Gender Pay Gap seminar on Tuesday 10th July)
- Follow the Advice
- As well as advice given by experts, the UK government has produced a toolkit with advice and actions for closing the Gender Pay Gap
- Monitor the Data
- The Gender Pay Gap isn’t likely to be resolved overnight, and so will need regular checks to ensure that your organisation is doing everything possible to close the gap
- Remember to update the information you provide to the UK government – this is important to help our nation monitor the Gender Pay Gap
Developing a Coherent Strategy to Close the Gender Gap
On Tuesday 10th July, we are holding a themed dinner event to discuss strategies to address the Gender Pay Gap.
Understanding the nature of your gender gap is not enough to address what needs to happen to close it. You have to ask ‘why’ you would want to close it and then ‘how’ and ‘what’ you can do to develop a coherent strategy to address the balance. Developing and implementing a plan that is effective and can be cascaded throughout your business means learning from other best practice and then evolving it to fit your culture.
Karen Frost is a specialist in Leadership Development and has supported a number of multinational organisations to develop their female leaders. In this workshop she will provide you with compelling reasons why you should develop your women leaders and then share with you ideas and strategies for addressing the gender gap without resorting to positive discrimination.
To read more about this invite only event, and to request your place, please click here.