You’ve probably heard about the big changes coming in the next few years. No, we’re not talking Brexit, although there’ll be plenty to say on that subject nearer the time. What we’re referring to is the rules around pay reporting – and particularly how the pay gap between men and women will be reported – due to come into force in 2018.
This change was originally promised to be here in 2016, but has been put back on the backburner by the government for various reasons. It will mean companies and organisations with more than 250 staff (currently somewhere around 8,000) will have to publish the salaries and bonuses of male and female staff, with the idea that this will highlight any ‘gaps’ between the sexes.
It’s actually been illegal to pay men and women different salaries for the same job since 1970, but the Office of National Statistics (ONS) believes the pay gap is about 19.2% in the UK1, although it’s a much healthier situation than at many other times, and better than lots of other countries.
So with two years to go until the legislation comes in, is your organisation ready? Hopefully, you’re all answering ‘Yes’, which is fantastic. If you’re not then you need to start thinking about it now. And there’s a couple of things in particular you should concentrate on – change management and transparency.
We’ve talked at length about change management before, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it again as it’s really relevant here. Your organisation might need to go through some pretty significant changes to get itself in the right shape for what’s coming.
Some of the changes you might need to make are moving ‘underpaid’ employees up the pay scale, creating more part-time or flexible working opportunities, and making sure your pay-data is easily accessible and understandable.
Before and during any period of change, there’s a few rules to remember to help smooth things along. Start by getting everyone involved who needs to be. Then explain what’s happening and why you’re making the changes. Remember to make your changes realistic and achievable.
You’ve also got to be empathetic and listen to people’s concerns. It’s natural for people to fear change and not be receptive to it. An easy way to overcome this is to give people small nuggets of change at a time so they don’t have to do too much in one go. Managing people and their expectations through big periods of change isn’t always easy, but keeping the lines of communication open and being honest with people works wonders.
Check out our blog on change management for a more in-depth look at the subject.
We also mentioned transparency earlier. It’s actually a legal requirement of the new legislation. What it actually means is making sure your employees fully understand your organisation’s pay and benefit systems. The easiest way to do this is to have one system for everyone, whether they’re on the factory floor or in the boardroom. Doing this makes everything much more transparent, keeps the ‘us and them’ mentality at bay and reduces the chances of your organisation being labelled as discriminatory.
1www.gov.uk/government/news/nicky-morgan-urges-employers-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap
[optin title=”If you’d like to discuss changes in your organisation, we’d love to hear from you” border=”true” text=”leave your details below and we’ll get back to you” buttontext=”Submit” leadlist=”609939″ successMessage=”Message has been submitted successfully.” errorMessage=”Failed to send your message. Please try later.” invalidEmailMessage=”Your email address does not appear valid.” image=”http://www.justlibra.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Just-Libra-logo.png” collectfirstname=”true” collectlastname=”true” collectphone=”true” collectcompany=”true” id=”13434″]
