What Does a Gender Pay Gap Report Reveal About Your Company?

A recent Glassdoor survey found that 67% of employees say they would not apply for jobs in companies where they believe a gender pay gap exists. Moreover, about 80% of millennials say they would not even apply for a job if they believed the company had a gender pay gap.

By 4th April 2019 all companies with more than 250 employees must publish their gender pay gap report. Despite this, businesses are dragging their feet.

With just one week to the deadline, nearly two-thirds of companies still have not disclosed the average difference between what they pay male and female employees per hour.

In total, more than 10,000 of the UK’s large firms are expected to report, but just under 4,000 had done so by Wednesday morning, reported the BBC. Based on the figures so far, three out of four UK companies have a pay gap.

Based on the figures from last year, we know that financial institutions have some of the biggest gender pay gaps. Half of the large firms with the widest gaps are banks:

• Barclays Investment Bank
• Lloyds Bank
• Clydesdale
• RBS
• Lloyds Banking Group

They all filed pay gaps of more than 30%. This means that for every £10 the average man working there earns, the average woman takes home less than £7.

What does it say about your business?

Demonstrating a business focus on equality is essential for a positive employer brand, reputation and increased employee engagement in a world where the nation’s workforce are passionate about these issues.

Promising your staff that they will be paid based on their merit rather than on their gender, is great. But showing that you’re serious about tackling gender equality offers another valuable brand commodity: humility.

Committing to gender equality means you have introspection. And you’re not so proud as a company to admit that there is a serious problem in your industry. We already know that salary isn’t everything.

Employees want job satisfaction and the knowledge that they are cared about at work more than they want a fat pay package (although that’s nice too!)

If you can show prospects that you actually care about social issues, your business is more likely to earn the respect of your employees and top upcoming talent.

The global workforce has officially begun to swing back in the favour of Millennials and with Gen Z’ers coming up behind them, businesses can’t restrict social policy issues to internal documents and board-level meetings.

What’s the solution?

Pay your employees fairly.

A good start is by ensuring you understand the demographic of your employees and how salaries correlate with this. Using this payroll data, you can identify your gender pay issues and start the process of closing the gap.

It may be the law that you only need to report on the gender pay gap if you have over 250 employees, but ALL companies, whether you have 5 or 5,000 employees, have a duty and a responsibility to work on closing the gap.

Be humble.

Being open and honest about issues in your business or your industry is not a sign of business weakness. It’s a sign of strength and progression.

Write official policy documents and nominate equality champions whose job it is to enforce and promote the changes you’re committing to.

Be an industry leader.

Embracing social change within business is necessary and just. It also gives your company something to shout about that everyone can care about. Going out to an industry conference to brag about your sales and innovations is only of interest to those already invested in you.

Addressing issues that affect people and how you’re going out on the line to fix them is what really turns heads.

PayPal recently made global news when they revealed how they tackled their gender pay gap in a recent CNBC interview. CEO Daniel Schulman hopes other companies adopt PayPal’s philosophy.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he told CNBC. “It’s also about self-interest as a company and how we best serve our customers, because this idea of more diverse companies performs better — that’s a fact.”

Tomorrow’s industry leaders are the ones that embrace diversity today and ensure a fair and equal working environment for everyone.

The article was written by Gary Webb, Director of Marketing & Communications for FMP Global.