- in European Union
- within Transport, Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment and Family and Matrimonial topic(s)
- with Senior Company Executives, HR and Inhouse Counsel
The government has published its response to the consultation it conducted last year on mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. It has confirmed that it will introduce a requirement for large companies that are already within scope of gender pay gap reporting requirements to disclose their ethnicity and disability pay gaps. (For more details on the consultation, see our Employment Notes blog post here.)
The response sets out details of the new reporting regime. Key features include:
- employers will be in-scope if they have 250 or more employees in Great Britain, mirroring the gender pay gap reporting regime;
- the data points to be disclosed will align with the six measures already used for gender pay gap reporting, which include mean difference in average hourly pay, the percentage of employees in each of four pay quartiles and the percentage of employees receiving bonuses;
- employers will need to provide a breakdown of their workforce by ethnicity and disability status, and also disclose the percentage of employees who did not state their ethnicity or disability status; and
- employers will need to publish action plans on improving workplace equality for ethnic minority and disabled employees. (See our Employment Notes blog post here for information on the requirement for equality action plans.)
The response paper includes draft clauses of primary legislation, to be inserted into the Equality Act 2010, which would allow for regulations to be made setting out the details of the reporting obligation. The response does not set out when the new reporting requirements will come into force but states that the government will publish more information in due course.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
