So this week saw the day that UK companies with more than 250 employees need to take a snapshot of their pay in order to calculate their gender pay gap, and I’m personally looking forward to helping our Maritime HR Association members with their analysis.
Hopefully affected businesses will have assessed their eligibility already, and given consideration to who and what payments they will include within the analysis. Proactive ones will have already consulted with their key internal stakeholders and taken steps to identify and address any gaps too.
Here’s my quick summary of what affected employers within any industry should be striving to achieve during the year ahead:
• At the end of the pay period, pull together all the data you need for all the relevant employees. Be clear about who is included and who is not, and don’t forget to evidence why you are excluding some people if that is the case.
• Conduct the 7 calculations required by the regulations (and any others you might deem relevant to help explain your position).
• Interpret the results – are there areas of the business where the gap is higher or lower than the business overall and what could the reason be for this?
• Think about which initiatives will help best address the gap(s). If there is more of a gap in your bonus payments, for example, you may choose to focus your initial efforts there. It may be that a certain job family needs specific attention, or you are struggling to appoint and/or retain women into certain roles.
• Draft a written statement to confirm the accuracy of these calculations (ideally including some supporting narrative to explain your current position and summarise what you plan to do about it) and ensure authorised by an appropriate senior person.
• Check your material with your legal and communications teams if you haven’t included them already, to ensure the best possible messaging.
• Publish the results and statement on your own website and upload it to the designated government website before 4th April 2018.
You’ll then need to start the cycle all over again, only next year you will be carrying out the analysis and comparing this to the previous year’s results. Once you have your new gender pay gap position you will want to determine what any changes can be attributed to, and consider this when developing future action plans.
This year is just the beginning and I can’t wait to see what impact we can make, particularly within the shipping industry. Watch this space…
Sarah Hutley, Compensation & Benefits Consultant, HR Consulting, Spinnaker Global
