Employer watch points
We’ve identified the top five challenges faced by companies reporting their pay gaps.
Companies who strive for best practice want to get the most out of their pay gap reporting. The best way to do this is to ensure you have a good grasp of the barriers women face at work, how to analyse your pay gap data and how to translate this into action.
Even the best companies can make a mistake in their pay gap reporting. It’s helpful to know where it can go wrong but doesn’t have to.
Our employer watchpoints will help you to tackle these issues before reporting and be a best practice company.
1. Building your gender pay gap knowledge
Whether this is the third time you’re reporting your pay gap data or the first, it’s really important to build your knowledge and understanding of the gender pay gap and its causes. Most companies don’t have dedicated gender pay gap expertise in their organisation, whilst others might not know where to begin. A good understanding of the causes of the pay gap, and their solutions, is essential to tackle workplace gender inequality.
This site has a range of resources which can help you build this knowledge.
Close the Gap also offers bespoke training and guidance to help you be a leader on gender equality at work.
2. Producing best practice analysis
It’s important to develop a good quality analysis of your pay gap data. This should set out the gender equality concerns you have identified in your data.
Many companies assume there isn't and issue in their organisation. You may feel confident you would never intentionally discriminate against women. However, unintentional discrimination and inequalities are present in almost all employers.
Being a leader in gender equality and diversity means acknowledging challenges and taking ownership of what you can do to create positive change.
The Close Your Pay Gap tool can provide you with a set of bespoke actions to help you close your gender pay gap and be a best practice company.
3. Developing actions that work
Identifying the key issues in your workplace is a great start, but it is vital to translate these into action. A good understanding of the causes of the pay gap will help you to do this effectively.
Closing your gender pay gap needs a set of actions which speaks to each of the issues you have identified. It’s also important to look at how existing actions are progressing so you can tailor these to be as effective as possible.
The Close Your Pay Gap tool can generate a range of targeted and effective actions which you can use to build your action plan.
4. Tracking, timescales, targets, teamwork
The best way to make the most of your gender pay gap action plan is to assign accountability. Put simply, what gets measured gets managed.
The best quality actions have targets and timescales to focus minds and enable you to track progress. Delegating responsibility for each action to key people in your organisation will help to ensure they are prioritised and progressed.
Close the Gap offers a consultancy service to develop a bespoke action plan with the right targets, timescales and indicators for your company.
We can also provide one-to-one training and support to help grow your own gender pay gap expertise.
5. Promoting your progress
Once you have the right foundations in place, you’re going to want to talk about all the good work you’ve been doing. Reporting on progress is a great way to share your successes and good practice and to be accountable to your employees, to shareholders, and to the public. Also, make sure you maintain active links to your last three years’ reports on your website. This is a key requirement of the regulations.
Full reporting, of both successes and challenges, is a clear sign of a best practice company. It makes good business sense to put your company in the best position to close your pay gap and be a leader on gender equality and diversity in the workplace.
