As the legal deadline for gender pay reporting in the UK approaches, the CIPD has reported that 17 percent of large employers are leaving it to the last minute.
The deadline to report gender pay gap data for 2024 is 30 March for most public authority employers and 4 April for private, voluntary and all other public authority employers.
However, the CIPD’s Pay, Performance and Transparency 2024 report, released last week, found that an “alarming number of employers” are not conducting their gender pay gap reporting in line with government requirements.
Almost a fifth (17 percent) of large employers (250 plus employees) said they hadn’t carried out gender pay gap reporting yet. A similar proportion, 18 percent, said they didn’t know whether their organisations had conducted reporting. Research results were based on a survey with 832 HR decision-makers from the private, public and voluntary sectors conducted in October 2023.
Organisations most likely to admit to not carrying out gender pay reporting in the 12 months to October 2023 were those employing between 250 and 499 people, despite it being a legal requirement for all businesses with 250 or more employees in England, Scotland, and Wales.
As a result, the CIPD is calling on employers to help tackle discrimination and inequalities at work by reporting on their gender pay gap data and analysing that data to create a narrative and action plan.
Charles Cotton, senior reward adviser at the CIPD, urged employers to get ready to report as the deadline looms. He also called on employers to “not only calculate their gender pay gap data, but to really understand the reasons for it, and act on them wherever possible”.
“Pay gap reporting is an important part of ensuring a fair workplace, as well as having clear business benefits, such as attracting and retaining talent by showing a commitment to good practice,” he said. “It’s important that employers understand the barriers their people may face, not only relating to pay, but also in terms of recruitment, promotion and development opportunities. Pay gap reporting, along with having an effective narrative and action plan, can identify and help tackle the causes of gender inequality.”
Sirsha Haldar, general manager of the UK, Ireland & South Africa at ADP, said: “Pay disparities can drive away valuable female talent and tarnish a company’s reputation, especially among younger generations increasingly concerned about equality in pay.”
The CIPD also highlighted the need for greater disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting, which although not yet a legal requirement, would help to address inequality.
The report showed that 40 percent of large employers had already carried out an analysis of their ethnicity pay data, 35 percent had not, while a quarter didn’t know. More than a quarter (27 percent) of large employers had conducted a disability pay report, 46 percent had not and 28 percent didn’t know.
The CIPD said that these are areas that employers can and should also focus on, despite there being no legal requirement to do so. Reporting on these pay disparities can help employers understand where they need to take action to address discrimination and other causes of inequality at work.
