This webinar from the Reward SIG looks at the gender pay gap reporting regulations, who is covered, and what it means for organisations. Emma Burns, a legal expert in the field, and Adrian Clarkson, HR Director of an international engineering consultancy, explore the details of the regulations for gender pay gap reporting, due to come into force April 2017.
Gender pay reporting: the what, how and when
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difference in the average earnings including overtime of the women and many
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in any given population and according to official data back in 2016 April 2016
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the gender pay gap for median earnings was nine point four percent for
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full-time employees so in effect men were earning nine point
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four percent mall and then female full-time employees when it came to
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part-time workers it was the other way around women were earning 6% more than
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part-time males and when you add both the full time and the part-time workers together you end up with women and
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earning 18 percent less than their male counterparts but of course only fair to
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point out that other gender pay gaps out there so when it comes to how much a
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boys and girls get in terms of pocket money according to research by the
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Halifax and on average boys in the UK receive 13% more in weekly pocket money
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than girls while parents give boys aged between 8 and 15 an average of 6 pounds
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and 93 a week and they give girls 6 pound 16 and why is there a gap there
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well according to research it may be because boys are slightly more likely to
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complain and ask for more compared to girls so whilst 44% of boys said they
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were prepared to ask for more only 39 percent of girls are going to do
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similarly similarly when it comes to how
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much men and women are prepared to pay for goods and services again there's a
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gap so the next research has been carried out in the States and it looked
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to what men and women pay for essentially identical products but which are marketed in them separately so
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princes we found that and girls baby clothes cost more than those for boys shirts for girls can cost
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13% more and toys marketed as girls cost 11% more than those the boys even if
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they were exactly the same toys in different colors the promise difference covers out that carries over into
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adulthood where women shirt surprise 15% more than men's shirts and women's
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shampoo products cost 48 percent more than products marketed to men similarly
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women pay 56 percent more for personal care products even when the ingredients
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are similar and when it comes to old age support and rages for women are 15% more
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than those for men and walking-sticks can cost 12% more the study found that
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when averaged across a lifetime women are paying 57 percent more for
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comparable products and similar studies carried out in the UK have found
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differences again both in terms of what men and women pay so for instance women
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tend to pay more for jeans or things such as raises so while there are
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various pay gaps and today we're going to be focusing on the difference in earnings and between men and women and
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I'll now pass on to Emma and Hugh to talk about their experiences thanks very
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much thank you thank you very much Charles very interesting to know that
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I'm earning less but paying more for things I've firm for those of you who've
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not heard me I'm a partner and ahead of them employment my specialist area is employment law and I work in a firm in
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Wales it's gender pay gap is something I've been interested in quite a long
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time for lots of equal pay cases and gender pay and equal pay are very
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separate things but obviously they're interlinked because they are all about the
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difference between the way that men and women are paid light Charles I've put in
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some opening stats in the first slide so again that headline figure of 18.1%
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which was the difference according to the Office of National Statistics last
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year now that figure has come down significantly since the ONS first
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started to collate this information they started in 1977 where they stat was
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between 7% so there is clear movement there one of the very interesting things though is that that headline figure
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doesn't tell the whole story and there is huge variation according to occupational group and age last summer
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there was a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and they looked at the figure for mothers so women who
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leave the workplace and then take some time out and return and actually the
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gender pay gap for that group of people goes up to 33% so that it are much much
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more obvious differential and then an
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interesting stat that I came across last summer as well another piece of research was that this whole idea of whether it
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is about men and women not asking there was a study that was done in Australia
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by the caste Business School where they see such examine whether it was because women weren't asking to pay rises in the
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same way as men and in their research was that in light for light cases women
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were 25% less likely to be given a pay rise than men in response to an Oscar
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they've actually made for me that statistic kind of demonstrates that this is a hugely complex area so what we have
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now is the government wanting to advance the cause around gender pay gap cut
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equal pay legislation since 1975 so for a long long time and yet we still have a
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very noticeable gender pay gap so what is happening is within the Equality Act
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2010 there was a power put in that would
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enable regulations to be made that would affect private and third sector employers and larger ones with 250 plus
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employees to publish gender pay info that provision was brought into force
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and we now have the final version of the draft regulations that will come into force very soon on the 6th of April this
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year employers who fall into the category of having more than 250 employees will have
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to publish their gender pay gap regulation information within 12 months
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of the regulations coming into force so by the 5th of April 2018 there is also a
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very similar obligation on public sector bodies again it's for those larger
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public sector bodies and those with 250 plus employees it only applies in
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England though not Scotland and Wales and there's a slight difference to those regulations there's a difference in
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relation to the date and there's an additional reporting GT which is all
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connected to the public sector equality Duty and the reporting obligations around those but the real focus from
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each day is on the private and third sector the voluntary sector employees lawyers what has to be published is six
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types of information the mean gender pay gap to the overall organization the
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median agenda pay gap and the difference between those of course is the mean is the is what I would think of as an
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average being that you add everything up and then divide it by the number but
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also the median which is the midpoint it's actually the median which is used
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by the Office of National Statistics because they think it is a more accurate
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way of doing it so that you get rid of the very lowest and the very highest
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which can skew the information but actually these are these regulations required both of those to be produced
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then there's a requirement to look at something called bonus gender pay
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information so specifically looking at bonus pay rather than general pay and
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again publishing the mean and the median of bonus gender pay gap around bonuses
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there's also an obligation to look at the proportion of male and female employees in your workforce that are
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receiving bonus payments so if you have more men receiving bonuses and obviously that will be a positive percentage that
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you would need to report on plus then there's an attempt to look at your overall pay range so what you do is you
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split your males and females up into quartiles and I'll show you a slide that
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actually gives a bit more detail around that and what this actually means in
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order to understand and start being able to do all of these calculations it's
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really important to understand sort of basic principles of when the Pay information is coming in when you have
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to do the pay information and it basically works on a snapshot principle for the gender pay gap so it's the idea
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of this snapshot date of a fifth of April in each year and you use that date to look at your pay that you're paying
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on that date every year the regulations
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use the concept of a relevant pay period and what that means is if you are an
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employer that pays monthly then it is the month's pay that includes whether
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month includes the fifth of April it is that pay period that you factor in for
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your gender pay information if you're an employer that pays weekly then it is the week in which the fifth of April Fool's
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and if you are looking at for weekly pay
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then it again is that four week period where the fifth of April falls into that
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period to that relevant pay period for your gender pay your hourly rate pay
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though many of the bonuses what you have to do is factor in your bonuses for the
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preceding 12 months up to the 5th of April each year so for the first year of reporting we're
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actually looking at the 12 months going back to the 6th of April 2016 and you
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should be too late in all of that bonus information up to the 5th of April 2017
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in order to understand who is captured by the obligation in the gender pay
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regulations you need to do a sum and calculate how many employees that you've got so the threshold figure is 250 and
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you look at that on your snapshot date so it's the 5th of April every year if
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you're part of a group structure then you treat each subsidiary company within the group quite separately the
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definition of employee for the purpose of these regulations is wider than
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employee under the employment rights Act it's the same definition that's used in
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the Equality Act which is an extended definition so it includes anyone who's
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actually employed under a contract of service so what we would think of as a normal employee but also includes
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apprentices and anybody that is employed on a contract to do work personally so
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that would capture freelance contractors that you might have engaged for you so
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when you're doing your numbers and working out who your 250 are then you
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have contractors freelance individuals who work on a basis of a single contract
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for an individual they will be captured casual workers would very likely to be
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included if they are employed with you on the 5th of April but obviously if
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they're not employed with you on the 5th of April that they are the sort of employees that come and go then that
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they would not necessarily count towards your 254 agency workers if they are not
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employed directly by you but employed by the agency then they are going to be
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captured by the agencies figures rather than you have to do them then there's a very specific provision
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for partners of law firms well firms they are definitely excluded somebody
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agencies ask the question would it include non-executive directors very
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potentially it would if they are employed under a contract to personally do work there's also a contact in the
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gender regulations that covers if
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there's a provision around who is counted and whether they are receiving
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full pay or not when the first regulations came out everything such as
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maternity pay will also be included in the definition of pay and so part of the feedback on those draft regulations was
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well this is going to skew the figures because if you've got a woman who's off on maternity we're receiving such a
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maternity pay obviously she's going to be earning less than full pay and therefore that is going to demonstrate a
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gender pay gap so the revised regulations recognize that you may have
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employees who are absent on leave and receiving less than full pay and that this could skew the overall picture so
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the new regulation had a definition of full pay relevant employees this is any
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employees who are on leave during the relevant pay period so that period of
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pay whether it's monthly weekly for weekly whatever that includes the 5th of
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April and who are not during that period in receipt of full pay the regulations
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specifically refer to annual leave sick leave family leave from maternity leave paternity leave parental leave all of
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those types of family leaves plus it also refers to special leaves or other types of sabbatical leaves that you
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might include the full pay relevant employees it's important to remember are
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only excluded for when you're calculating your average hourly rates so
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when you're looking at your mean and median comparison with your hourly rates and your quartile provision they're not
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excluded when you're counting your 206 the threshold and they're not included in relation to bonus pay so looking at
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some of the really important definitions and understanding what we actually have to count towards pay regulations very
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clear pay includes basic pays includes all kinds of allowances so if somebody's
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getting paid an ounce because they do extra things additional duties that will count any kind of London wasting
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geographical weighting that will count to get a car allowance that will count a
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market forces factor premium or any kind of equipment allowance that counts of
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pay pay for piecework we'll also can but a usually will be either also you like
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to have somebody on basic pay or getting piece work paid pay for leave as long as
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it's full pay and then any kind of shift premium pay it's a distinction here
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because overtime pay is absolutely not included but pay for working at
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different times of work so we can shift premium or an active hours premium that
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would count excluded then is overtime pay expenses the value of any salary
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sacrifice schemes which does seem potentially somewhat harsh because if these are schemes that employees are
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choosing to be part of actually you have no control over whether it's men or
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women that are choosing to be part of those schemes but you have to somebody as possible salary sacrifice scheme then
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it is only there that the pay that remains that that is counted any
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benefits in kind redundancy pay termination pay all of that sort of pay
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is excluded and what you're working on is that is gross pay so before any deductions are made bonus pay is defined
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and bonus pay includes payments that relate to profit sharing productivity
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performance incentive or Commission and it's whatever form in which is paid so
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it might actually be hard cash might be VAT so it might be something to do with
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shares again calculated before any deductions are made from that and with
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bonuses what you're concerned about is not when not the period to which the
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bonus is attributable but the time that the employee actually receives the
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benefit of the bonus at the time the bonus is actually paid I think somebody
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did ask do you include bonuses for those that have left the business no you
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definitely don't and and should the bonus be full-time equivalent no it
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shouldn't you look at the actual amount of the bonus so I'm picking up some
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questions as they come along if they're in the right place but we'll pick up all the questions later I'm sure the first
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thing that you have to do when you're coming to do your calculations is calculate the gross hourly rate of pay
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for your mail and your female employees and the regulations set out six steps of
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what you have to do that would it be helpful to actually do that basically the first thing they say you do is
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identify all the payments that the individuals have received in the
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relevant pay period so you factor in everything first of all then you take
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away anything that is not pay you then prorate any bonus pay now just a little
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bit of time explaining this if you pay bonuses during that reference period
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they get captured in the gross hourly rate of pay if you don't pay your
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bonuses around about April time then you don't have to worry about them for your gross hourly rate of pay it's only if
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they get paid in your April relevant pay period but to reflect the fact that you
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know you're counting a potentially whole annual bonus and that will skew the figures compared to companies that don't
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pay their bonuses at that time of year you are allowed to prorate the bonus pay
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so you're allowed to only take into account twelve of the bonus figure when you're doing your growth at a rate
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of pay calculations so once you've worked out what you're including into
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your number you add it all together you get the total pay of the individuals for
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that relevant pay period you're then meant to divide it out so
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you get to a weekly amount and the regulations very helpfully tell us how
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we are meant to treat a month and how we're meant to treat a year in order that we're all working from the same
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numbers we're factoring in you know February having 28 days whereas April
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has 30 and other months have more days once you've got your weekly amount you
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then divide by the number of working hours in a week and there are some
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specific provisions about working hours as I said previously all overtime is
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excluded so if somebody is doing overtime whether it's paid or unpaid you
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are not meant to factor that in at all for a normal weekly working hour
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employee you are supposed to base this on the number of hours that is stated in
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their contract and employment on the snapshot date so it's the number of hours for the 5th of April each year if
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it's somebody who doesn't have weekly working hours then what you're required to do is an averaging process very
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similar to what we're used to in the idea of the employment rights act and averaging out pay over the last 12 weeks
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up to the date of the relevant pay period but excluding people who
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excluding any weeks when somebody hasn't worked at all so for some of your casual employees you might be if you've got
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bank employees who might work one week but then not the next potentially you'll be averaging over quite a significant
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period of time because you need to find 12 weeks that they have actually received pay if you can't find 12 weeks
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where they've received pay then you can use the best number of weeks that you can have going to the actual
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calculations I have included in the slides exactly what the calculations are so
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that you can see these I'm not necessarily going to talk through all of them because they get quite repetitive but once you've worked out your gross
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hourly pay you then have to work out the average of it you then work out the
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average for men at the average for women and you express that as a percentage so
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if you look at the bits in italics on bottom of this slide this explains that
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an employer is a mean hourly rate of pay for all males full pay equivalent
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employees are fifteen and twenty five this employer also has pays women slightly less when looking at the mean
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rate of thirteen point forty two so once you convert that into a percentage it's
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a twelve percent mean gender pay gap you do exactly the same thing then for the
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median hourly pay the same percentage calculation and here we have somebody
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who's when they've worked out their median hourly rate to pay men are getting 16 pounds women are getting 13
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point 50 means that the overall gender pay gap there is 15.6 percent we then do
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the same for bonuses and it's again mean
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and median I think somebody did ask canoeing do you include those that have
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left the business since the last bonus pay date levers can be excluded just to
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answer that question so you're only having two even though you might be calculating bonuses for the whole year
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you only have to do the calculations for the people who are still there on the 5th of April you do the mean and then
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the median you also then do the proportions receiving bonus pay so that
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this is a symbol over the 12 months up to the snapshot date you work out the
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number of emails that have received a bonus and what percentage of the overall mail work for site is number of females
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that are receiving a bonus and what percentage of the overall work for that is and then work those out so you get to
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percentages so in this case an employer has 302 male employees 255 had a bonus
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whereas the 258 of the 258 employees are new 215 of received bonus so there's a
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slight differential in the percentages there eighty four point four percent of male employees have boners compared to
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eighty three point three percent then the proxy one of the most interesting
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calculations that you have to do is to split your employees into quartiles it
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wasn't clear at all in the first draft of the regulations exactly what this meant but we now do know what you're
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doing is you're splitting your employees into four quartiles based on the number
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of employees so in the example we've got 322 full pay relevant employees you
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divide 320 two by four so you end up each of your quartiles is going to have
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a quarter of the 322 so it's going to be right about eighty eighty one as you'll
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see on the next slide you then rank your employees based on the gross hourly rate
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of pay and work out for the lowest paid ones they fall into the first quarter or
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in your lowest quartile the next quarter going to your your middle your next
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quartile up and then your next quarter next quartile you can have some difficulties if you've got people that
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are paid the same and where they cross those boundaries you're meant to resolve that by making
26:00
sure you do that in a gender balanced way and then what you come out with is you look at the number of male and
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female employees bizarre in each of the pay ends and just to show you what that
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looks like what you don't have to do is say what the pay bands are a tool you don't have to say what the range of pay
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is for your quartiles you simply refer to them as the lower lower middle upper middle and upper quartile but in this
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example of those 332 the 81 lowest paid
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employees 48 men and 33 a female so actually we've got
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so gender pay gap there where we've got more lowest-paid people in this
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organization a male compared with female when we jumped however to the upper quartile we can see that there's 80
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employees in the upper quartile 58 a male and 22 a female so the decision is
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reversed quite considerably that although the lowest paid employees in
26:59
this organization of men actually the highest paid employees in this organization are predominantly men as
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well in terms of when and how this has
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to be done we have to do it within 12 months so within 12 months of the
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snapshot date each year you have to publish the information on your website
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in the UK in a manner accessible to all employees and the public which
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potentially means that it's searchable so it must be something that's quite easy to find on your website and you
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have to put on that that information has to remain there for at least three years so you will in through your time have
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three years worth of data there's also have a going to be a government website we haven't yet seen
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it it's not been launched as yet which we understand is going to have a league table type approach so that all
27:55
companies will report and they'll somehow you'll be seen somewhere in that table as to how you can be compared and
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benchmarked against other companies when you publish you also have to accompany the statistics by a signed statement of
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truth and that has to be signed by somebody both senior in your organisation and the regulations going
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to let us detail that who that is the big question for me is for so what
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what is the enforcement mechanism what what are the consequences if you don't do it it is a name and shame game only
28:31
there is absolutely no financial penalty that can befall your organization if you
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do not publish the information there is some suggestion that the EHR see could
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use the information to take enforcement action against you but that's certainly not the message
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that's coming out of the HRC and they're not suggesting that that is part of what
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they are thinking of doing at all there's also the possibility that the
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information could be used by employees to pursue employment tribunal claims around sex discrimination equal pay but
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really what the statistics produce are something that is very difficult to see
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how that is helpful to a particular individual who wants to pursue a claim and I would query whether or not they're
29:21
even enough to shift the burden of proof what I think they could be the effect of
29:27
that though could be that employees will be more aware of your gender pay situation so if they are concerned about
29:34
their pay then the fact that you're publishing might encourage them to ask some more questions but I mean I've
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delivered this seminar to a number of different HR people over the last year
29:47
and lots of them have a are not sure yet whether they're going to publish there
29:56
has been some very helpful latest guidance that come out in the recent in recent weeks published jointly with the
30:03
government equalities office and have very good step by step guide to complying with the regulations also has
30:10
some complex some clarity around some of the complex area so one of the questions was kind of gender identity which which
30:17
category do people fall in and all that they say about us is that you must treat
30:22
people sensitively it also goes on to explain a little bit about the difference between gender pay gap and
30:28
equal pay I'm noting that they are very different things Equal Pay is about people who are
30:33
working at the same level comparing their pay whereas gender pay is about people who are lumped in together across
30:43
the whole organization but it also goes on to consider some of the causes of the
30:48
gender pay gap and actually tries to encourage employers to be very proactive and adopt a plan to take steps to reduce
30:55
the gender pay gap going forward final thoughts
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from me before we get answer questions check with your HR system can cope do
31:08
your figures as soon as possible don't be left guessing you don't have to publish them straightaway but I think if
31:14
you have an idea of what your figures are likely to look through you can think about this internally as an organization
31:21
and what you want how best to present them one of the things you might also
31:26
look into is whether you can present the historical position so you can actually show that being some improvement in your
31:33
organization everybody is saying you need to put a narrative around the figures so your HR professionals and
31:42
also your marketing professionals advance want to think very carefully about how you position this figure this
31:48
figures where that fits in into what you the messages you want to say about your
31:53
organization if you can see any obvious equal pay issues then now you've got
31:58
trying to fix them before you have to publish I'm not sure though that just doing this exercise really does help you
32:05
identify the equal pay issues the way you've got like for like who are not receiving the same level of pay but for
32:12
often you tend to know about those anyway and then should you consider longer-term solutions and adopt an
32:19
action plan you know that's something for you as organizations but to think
32:26
about and whether it's you know how it how important this is for that for the business the AEF guidance talks about
32:32
there being very clear economic benefits to being diverse and to looking at these
32:38
things positively that's me as a lawyer giving my perspective and telling you
32:44
about how the regulations work what we thought would be very helpful is to actually give an HR directors
32:49
perspective and find out what Adrian thinks that at all so I'm going to ask
32:55
gage in a couple of questions which is amply just explain to begin with Adrian
33:01
and something about opus international consulting limited and what you do what
33:07
employees you have yes certainly we are a civil structural traffic and transportation
33:13
transportation engineering consultancy we've got approximately 500 UK staff
33:20
operating over 12 locations so essentially we provide consulting design
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information on those types of projects and you've begun to look at whether or
33:32
not you can collect the information and do the calculations how easy have you found that process the proposals
33:40
themselves seem quite complex and there's actually quite a lot of detail to get into and understand but having
33:48
said that I can understand why why it's been written the way it has we've we've
33:54
been able to report on this fairly easily once we've fully understood the requirements and we've established our
34:01
starting position fairly easily and and
34:07
where are you in your thinking about whether you event publish we've not reached a final decision on that but the
34:14
current thinking is that we are we're likely to publish we want to be
34:20
transparent and open with our with our own staff and also externally we think
34:27
it's important to do that final decision yet to be taken but my feeling is we would be likely to publish and obviously
34:35
if you are going to publish will do you're not thinking of just publishing the stats as a sort of bold without any
34:42
explanation to sitting behind them what what through thoughts are you having
34:47
around the narrative we absolutely will need a narrative as a as an engineering
34:54
company we're already aware that we need to attract more females into engineering
35:00
so we have an imbalance in terms of the number of females in our business versus
35:06
the number of males we have 26 percent of our workforce of female and where
35:12
we're fairly active in trying to address that and for that reason we need to
35:18
really put a good narrative alongside the figures and we perhaps have to educate our own
35:26
staff if they view this information around what the gender pay gap is actually reporting and then it isn't for
35:34
example the same as an equal pay gap it's a really important consideration and we need to give some some real
35:41
thought to how we convey the information
35:46
and thank you very much a dream and we're opened questions now if anybody's
35:53
got any eyes Charles you'll learn you'll filled those and put them yes sure yes
35:59
thanks very much Cameron Adrian your very interesting
36:05
presentations I think one of the questions that I noticed was around what
36:14
happens if people receive a bonus we shade in sacrifice into a pension scheme
36:19
how is that question dealt that issue dealt with I think you have to count the
36:28
bonus I've I've just been looking at what the 8's guidance says about it the
36:36
regulations don't deal with it directly but the starting point is how the what's
36:43
on the pay slip and so you start with if pay is then being deducted into pension
36:50
I think that means that the bonus would count but I think I think that that's an
36:55
excellent question that I thought oh I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to answer that I think that's detail but I would my instinctive reaction is is to
37:02
take bonus count in that even if it's waved into pension scheme another
37:08
question was around company cars and also the option of getting a car
37:15
allowance so would you how would you look at company cars as part of the
37:20
gender pay gap reporting and how would you do with those --is-- instances where people have opted for an hour an hour
37:27
for an allowance rather than for a car itself and the regulations are very very clear
37:35
the if you are paying a car allowance that is factored into pay but if you are
37:41
if other people are taking company cars then you exclude that because it's a benefit in kind so I think the way that
37:48
you would address that is explaining that in your narrative if that is
37:55
creating any kind of gender pay queueing effect I mean whether or not it's
38:02
creating a skewing effect will depend on the proportion of men and women that are doing one or the other if you've got all
38:09
women taking allowances and all men taking the company cars that actually might seem like ended up having a very
38:15
positive effect another question was around bonuses and what happens if those
38:23
parts of that bonus is paid in share options or restricted shares how would
38:28
you value that in terms of gender pay gap reporting would you kind of value
38:36
realized of the year or the grant value and again the regulations aren't very
38:43
clear as to what to do but yes that fact is was I I would agree but
38:49
that's it it's the point in which it's paid so what if you are so for example
38:55
if you're assuring chopin's do they have a particular value if you're referring options in shares where you assume that
39:01
they have a particular market value which has lasted what the the tax
39:06
position will be based on so it's that market value at the time of issue all
39:11
the time of grant if it's a share option so the shares will be at vesting then yes so what happens and if it wasn't
39:20
part of the bonus scheme you just got shares separately with that then the part of pain well now that's a very good
39:28
question if the regulations aren't clear
39:36
their not excluded from pay but it is only bonus pay but it where securities
39:45
so paying in the form of securities includes chairs so I mean if it wasn't
39:53
if it was a regular part of somebody's remuneration package that was just as a
39:59
matter of course I think it would be excluded from hey and letter with a
40:04
bonus relationship to it well there'll
40:11
be opportunities for you to check this at happily two-stage MO we can add a
40:16
mainly in the webinar as appropriate and then the question was around what
40:23
happens to companies that are employing people and overseas so either they've
40:28
got British people working overseas or they've got people who are from overseas
40:34
working in the UK and were those people dealt with I am in the original draft of
40:41
the regulations there was a very specific provision to say that it with UK based employees but that has
40:47
disappeared which means that the current
40:52
commentators are thinking a twink leading me that if an employee could
40:58
bring a claim under the Equality Act notwithstanding that they're based overseas they will count towards the 250
41:07
threshold and they will count in terms of their numbers you need to include
41:13
them in the pay information right we've
41:20
got a few questions around bonuses for instance just to clarify if an annual
41:26
bonus is paid in December each year and this chap so what and was wondering
41:31
whether it's rising think that only one twelfth of that bonus is taken into account for calculation purposes or is
41:38
it across the year no idiot this is exactly that this is it's a
41:43
bizarre kind of odd bit about the regulations unless you pay your bonuses
41:49
around April so the pay period that includes the fifth of April you do not
41:56
have to put your bonus pay into your average pay calculation only if you pay
42:04
your bonuses in April that you can't bonus pay into that calculation so a very sensible way of avoiding having to
42:10
do that would be to make sure you don't pay your bonuses in April so what
42:17
happens if you don't if you pay your bonuses in November then how would you tell that you would calculate it over
42:22
the year yeah your your average gender your average hourly rate of pay you can
42:29
ignore bonuses for that purpose but when you look at your bonus pay it your bonus
42:35
pay is bonuses that are paid in the twelve months preceding the 5th of April so if you've paid your bonuses in
42:43
December 2016 it's that bonus pay that will count that you'll need to report on by the 5th of
42:50
April 2018 and if that query is what hat
42:56
is reinstating for Ireland from June to pick out reporting as a very simple many
43:02
of our members we're working in Ireland and some will be based in the Republic
43:08
and others will be based in Northern Ireland and what types of surveys specifically also covers as you know
43:14
this you are in to earn people new international workers as well yeah I mean it's it's the UK come from the
43:21
company that is in the UK that is captured by the regulation so any any
43:28
subsidy companies there's a base in southern ireland will not be captured by
43:35
the regulations because they're outside of the UK legislation but if you've got
43:40
somebody who is seconded to go and work out there then obviously they will count
43:46
if they have a contract with a UK company um another query that some
43:53
organizations allow their employees to convert their bonus into company shares is if counted in the bonus calculation
44:01
civilly be excluded um shares any bonus
44:06
that is paid whether it's through the form of shares or through the form of cash
44:11
has to be counted and then you have that issue about how you actually value the
44:17
shares it's easier actually you're converting a cash bonus into shares
44:22
because you know what the value of the cash bonus is right another we're getting quite a lot of these questions
44:28
what I know that's it what is it that you've talked about the definition
44:33
subsidiary what it so you've talked about subsidiaries what is the definition of a subsidiary and how would
44:40
that differ from the PA ye tax reference
44:45
what I mean by subsidiary is a coop as a Companies Act subsidiary so one of the
44:53
complications I think I've got one client who they have a very complex
45:00
payroll arrangement so parent company has an 250 plus employees but if one of
45:09
the subsidiary company so were securing UK something else only has 20 employees
45:17
then that company can be excluded but parent company would still have to factor it in for their employees so you
45:26
need to know if you've got a complex group structure exactly which individuals are employed by which group
45:33
company it's got the tax payroll reference and who actually manages the
45:38
payroll is not part of the consideration at all so we just had another question
45:45
that out adding sits where they've got and three offices in Scotland Wales and
45:51
Northern Ireland each with fewer than ten employees presumably there it would be case
45:57
aggregating that information together to get the total numbers but let me just go
46:04
back to that question sorry so it was are they all they're based in
46:11
the different places but are they employed by the same company yes there
46:16
are three small offices yes so treat small offices each with
46:21
they would be included providing overall so the English office have 250
46:31
altogether yes thank you thank you for clarifying the vast majority of employer
46:37
in England and let the Scottish wealth and organising offices are obstructed
46:43
there is a structure so it is actually a separate company so there's um whatever
46:48
the company is Wales Limited then the ten or less than ten will be included so
46:56
yeah so you're all the same organization now is this a private sector and for
47:03
voluntary sector organisation as long as it's a private sector or voluntary sector organisation that is the case
47:08
slightly more complex if it's a public authority because of the way the public sector regulations being brought in
47:15
they're not necessary capturing Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland in the public
47:21
sector another question was around the
47:27
length that you'd be really expected to go to to kind of identify consultants on
47:34
the payroll yeah that's a really good question actually - that something I should have mentioned which is where
47:40
you've got consultants there is a specific exemption in the regulations
47:46
where if you can't earn these videos you need to identify them but if you don't
47:53
have the relevant pay information and it's not reasonable for you to obtain it
47:58
we can exclude them from the calculations so they will count towards
48:04
your 250 but they won't if you don't
48:10
know what's in it for example you don't monitor they're exactly what their hours are that they work then you've got the
48:19
definition not reasonably practicable for you to obtain the data then you can exclude them from your calculations
48:26
another thing would be another query has been around long term incentive plans which you know typically
48:33
for executives would they be treated as part of a bonus or again with any part
48:39
of pay or long term long term incentive plans are bonuses so you need to look at
48:46
when payment under those plans is actually made so it's not the period
48:53
during for which the incentive is earned that might be you know there might be a three year period over which somebody's
49:01
performance or contribution to the company's performance is measured you don't look at the whole three years you
49:08
look at when some sort of payment under that incentive plan is made whether or not that's in the form of cash or
49:14
securities another question has is
49:20
around how to deal with for instance casual employees who haven't got a total
49:26
of twelve weeks pay during the year to average and presume that could also apply to new employees as well it's you
49:33
don't have to do the best you can but you use as many weeks as you possibly can in order to prorate it that's
49:39
something that's quite well dealt with in the AAS guidance and so what you
49:50
talked about the pub that the public sector and how that may differ in Wales
49:56
for instance or Scotland what all this other main difference is there the
50:03
reason why there are differences in Wales and Scotland are most likely Northern Ireland is because the
50:09
regulations are being brought in through the public sector equality gt obligation and so that's actually devolved so it's
50:18
the Scottish government and the Welsh government that have the power to bring in the equivalent regulations to apply
50:25
to Scottish and Welsh and the same in Northern Ireland public authorities
50:32
there and they haven't yet done it and that with somebody from based in Wales
50:37
so I'm looking I'm keen to find out when it's happening it's in miles and and that with somebody from
50:44
the last government the other day and there is no current plans because they already have much more onerous reporting
50:50
obligations under the public sector equality duty regulations regime force in Wales already and so you think that
51:00
they will keep Sidra public sector organization in Wales you'll use the
51:07
existing requirements rather than the ones that are going to come up from the
51:12
gender pay gap yes I think so but I think I think there will also be an
51:17
underlying pressure on organizations that if they've got this information or they can easily put this information
51:23
together then they should be producing it anyway in Wales the within two weeks
51:30
of the draft regulations being published all of the local authorities in Wales had Freedom of Information requests
51:37
asking for this information so I think in the end the same standard information
51:45
will be required of all organizations providing they've got more than two engine 50 employees well I think you've
51:53
got quite a lot of other questions as well but I think what it will be useful is after the end of the webinar will
51:59
you'll be able to the opportunity there to kind of go through some of these and
52:04
will be able to put them on our website and let people when we email out and
52:11
people who listen to the webinar to let them know that it's now available on our website and people also the opportunity
52:17
to and see how you responded to some of those q and A's and they we haven't been
52:23
able to get through as well as some of the ones that we've already discussed in case that and you'd like to add some
52:28
more fanfic ation so I think I would I would say that one question there about
52:33
Housing Association Association definitely count as private organisations for this purpose yes
52:41
though I suppose they were even if they had been volunteer that have been picked up they would have been has picked up anyway wouldn't they I suppose yeah
52:48
they're not public authorities the organisations that account the authorities of those that are listed
52:53
in the schedules to the Freedom of Information Act so anybody is not listed there it is
52:59
included right well I'd like to thank
53:05
you Emma and also Adrienne as well for presenting this afternoon I've found it
53:12
quite interesting both for your insights Emma and how your organization Adrienne is is dealing with these issues and just
53:21
to reiterate that the webinar will be available on the CIP DS website and we
53:28
will be emailing participants to let them know when the webinar is on our
53:35
website and for you to download and just to let also you to remind you that the
53:41
CIP will be having a reward sig webinar in May time and to look out for details
53:48
about that so I like to wish you all the best for the rest of the day and thank
53:55
you for listening to the CIP D's webinar thank you
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