UK companies have made reducing their gender pay gap a top priority since the introduction of gender pay reporting in 2017, according to new research commissioned by the Government Equalities Office (GEO).
Approximately 69 per cent of employers now view closing the gender pay gap as a “high or medium” priority and more than two-thirds of companies reported having discussions at board level on how to close the gap.
The research comes as the GEO published two new pieces of guidance to help businesses analyse their pay gap. They provide step-by-step advice for employers to identify possible causes of their organisation’s gender pay gap and develop an effective action plan to tackle it.
Duncan Brown, head of HR consultancy at the Institute for Employment Studies, welcomed the new guidance and said it covered the common causes of the gender pay gap, but criticised it for not sufficiently addressing the effect bonuses have on pay gaps.
Last year’s reporting showed men tended to receive disproportionately larger bonuses than women.
Half of those treating their pay gap as a high priority stated that this was motivated by a desire to be fair and non-discriminatory. A fifth highlighted the potential impact on reputation as a motivating factor.
“The evidence is where people have bonus gaps it’s huge, much bigger than base pay gaps,” Brown said. “I think a lot of HR professionals aren’t involved in developing or operating bonus plans, and maybe it’s time that organisations allow HR to be more involved in that area.”
The guidance comes less than two months before the deadline for the second round of gender pay reporting, with more than 10,000 companies still to submit their figures for the year.
The data from the first round of reporting, submitted in 2018, showed more than three-quarters of businesses in the UK paid men more than women, with the average gap being 19.9 per cent.