Do’s
- Know that this applies to all businesses with 250 staff.
- Know that you need to take a snapshot of your headcount on 5 April each year (beginning 2017) but don’t have to publish your report until 12 months later….however…
- Seek to publish early as that will reflect well on you and is likely to be appreciated by your staff.
- Be aware that you need to count all part-time workers as one headcount for the purposes of identifying if you have the 250 employees necessary for this legislation to apply.
- Take this as an opportunity to identify positive steps you can take to begin to bridge the gap.
Don’ts
- Forget to publish your report on your website and on the government site in order to fulfil your legal obligations.
- Forget to include in your headcount numbers, all ‘workers’ plus any self-employed people who work for you if your agreement with them requires them to do the work for you (as opposed to them paying someone else.)
- Seek to hide your data from job applicants and current employees as that is likely to reflect badly on you in the long term
- Forget to include in your summary statement details of any positive initiatives you have been investing in order to bridge the pay gap.
- Think that this is as five-minute analysis job requiring one report from your payroll function. It is more complicated than that and will take some time to ensure you have collated all the right data before doing the analysis. (reporting form available on http://www.docswizard.co.uk)
And Finally…
10.5 Why not take this new legislation as an opportunity to steal a march on your competitors in respect of recruitment and retention by really pushing forward diversity initiatives, fully involving all your staff, suppliers and managers?