Election results 2024: What changes can employers expect?

Gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps

Currently large employers (those employing 250 or more employees) are required to report annually on their gender pay gap and publish their pay gap information on both their own website and a government website.

Although employers are encouraged to go further and to implement an “action plan” to reduce their gender pay gap, there is no obligation to do so, but Labour says it will require large employers to develop, publish and implement action plans to close their gender pay gaps. It will also require large employers to publish their ethnicity and disability pay gap data, which will involve more administration for employers.

Steps employers could take now to prepare, include:

• Assess your systems for data capture, including obtaining information from employees about their protected characteristics, to allow for smoother implementation of the pay gap reporting requirements in future.
  
  When gender pay gap reporting was brought in during 2017, a lot of employers ran a dummy report with assistance from solicitors so that it was performed under legal privilege, to help identify gaps and inconsistencies in data and pay before the actual published report was run. This type of process could be repeated for ethnicity and disability pay gap data.
• Consider other measures such as job evaluation schemes to allow for consistency and to help identify gaps in advance.
• Consider what you could do in the near-term to address any issues with hiring, retention and career pathways. Many employers already have gender pay gaps at senior levels and similar gaps may be identified when ethnicity and disability pay gap data is analysed.