We were hugely disappointed to hear the UK government announcement today of the removal of pay gap reporting requirements for businesses with fewer than 500 employees, effective from 3 October 2022.
Although only gender pay gap reporting is officially affected (there is no legal requirement to publish pay gaps for other characteristics currently), we believe this action by the Government further weakens the journey of achieving pay parity and undermines efforts to improve DEI, a key agenda item for businesses today. The whole purpose of pay gap reporting to understand and track the changing representation of pay for various groups across the pay architecture of the organisation. The risk is that this signals an excuse for organisations below 500 employees that pay fairness is not important enough to be measured or managed and further inequality is created in the longer term.
We would strongly urge businesses of any size to continue to report gender, ethnicity or any other pay gaps you are able to measure – not only does it tell your employees that it matters to you, but it gives a signal to the global community that despite government requirements, businesses deem it a key part of their ESG agenda to reduce any pay gaps that exist.
