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Richard Grogan on employment law: Gender pay gap regulations published in the UK

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Article Tags:
opinion
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Richard Grogan
Richard Grogan

Employment law solicitor Richard Grogan of Richard Grogan & Associates Solicitors notes the interesting features of UK draft regulation on gender pay gap reporting.

After a long wait, the final version of the UK’s Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 in the final draft statutory form have issued.

The issue of gender pay gap information is on the agenda here in Ireland and now that the UK have helpfully drafted Regulations it will give a stepping stone for somebody in the Department of Justice and Equality to start drafting.

The great benefit of the UK system is that they do issue draft Regulations. This allows for submissions to be made in relation to the draft particularly from a legal perspective to ensure that the Regulations will be workable.

The UK draft Regulations are interesting:

  1. They apply to all private sector employers with 250 or more employees. It is likely there will be a lower number here in Ireland.

  2. Employers must publish the mean and median hourly pay gap between men and women based on pay. Pay includes bonuses.

  3. Employers must also report the annual bonus gap between men and women together with the proportion of male and female employees who receive a bonus that year.

  4. The phrase “bonus” is very widely defined and includes commission and securities.

  5. The first calculation date is April 2017 and the data must be published on the employer’s website by April 2018 and remain there for three years.

  6. The definition of an “employee” is very wide.

  7. There are some exceptions where it would be difficult to obtain pay data, such as independent contractors who do not work fixed hours and are not paid through the pay roll.

  8. The Regulations helpfully set out fixed methods to assist with calculating the hourly rate of pay and specified that a month and a year are to be treated as having a specific number of days.

    9. It is well known that there is a gender pay gap here in Ireland. This issue needs to be tackled sooner rather than later. Hopefully the Minister for Justice and Equality will give it priority.

    • Richard Grogan is the principal solicitor at Richard Grogan & Associates Solicitors. You can subscribe to the firm’s monthly newsletter at grogansolicitors.ie.

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