Main navigation

Equality Assessments

Equality in the work place is firmly on the political agenda. It is over thirty years since the Equal Pay Act outlawed discriminatory pay practices yet the gender pay gap remains at about 20%. According to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), half of this difference is purely due to work place discrimination. The Government wants all employers to carry out equal pay audits as a matter of best practice. Trade unions, with over 400 trained equal pay representatives, call for biennial pay audits to be compulsory for all employers and will publish a list of organisations that refuse.

The Public Service Total Reward Framework described in this toolkit provides organisations with many opportunities to address equality and diversity issues through total reward. These could include tackling low or unequal pay through skill-enhancing training and development opportunities (Future Growth/Opportunity), providing parents and other carers with ways to maintain their career through flexible working (Work/Life Balance) or managing workloads sufficiently to enable employees to make time for development opportunities (Quality of Work).

The Civil Service has a comprehensive guide to Equal Pay Reviews, published jointly by the Cabinet Office and TMS Equality and Diversity Consultants. This document is for the sole use of employees of Civil Service departments and agencies and employees of Non-Departmental Public Bodies working in an official capacity, and the Civil Service Trades Unions in their work with these groups. Copies of this guide are not permitted to be placed on websites such as this, but can be obtained from David Livingstone at the Cabinet Office, on 020 7276 1522.

Further Resources:

Equal Opportunities Commission - section on Equal Pay

http://www.eoc.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=15339k

Women and Equality Unit

http://www.womenandequalityunit.gov.uk/

What is involved?

The principal tool in monitoring and managing equal pay is the equal pay audit. Every public sector organisation must complete such an audit and pressure is on the private sector to do the same. An equal pay audit is essentially an analysis of pay practice that compares the pay of men and women across the organisation, identifies and explains any gaps and develops a plan to close those that cannot be explained on grounds other than gender.

An audit of equal pay requires expertise in a number of key areas:

• Work measurement capability to determine work of equal value.
• Reward capability to audit and develop equality proof pay mechanisms.
• Performance management capability to audit and develop equality proof assessment systems.
• Data analysis capability to identify pay differentials and their causes.

Audit Planning	Deciding the scope of the review and identifying the information required. Are you including ethnicity, age or disability as well as gender?
Equal Work	Determining where men and women are doing equal work through job evaluation. This may include an audit of existing evaluations or the complete production of new evaluations.
Equal Pay Gaps	Collecting pay data for individual employees. A review of your policies, procedures and practice in reward management, including: start salaries, progression, bonuses, appraisals etc.
Analysis and Findings	Establishing the causes of any significant pay gaps and assessing any underlying risk areas. Production of a full report with recommendations and cost analysis.
Action Planning	Developing an equal pay action plan that addresses any individual cases and the broader underlying issues in the most appropriate way for your organisation.

Case Studies

Read this Case Study (pdf, 32Kb) of Equal Pay Reviews in a Research organisation.