Coronavirus: gender pay gap reporting suspended this year

The Government Equalities Office and Equality and Human Rights Commission have today (24 March 2020) decided to suspend enforcement of the gender pay gap reporting deadlines for this reporting year. This is due to the unprecedented pressures employers face as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

Implications

The announcement means employers normally required to prepare a report (i.e. those with at least 250 employees as at 5 April, or 31 March for public sector employers) no longer need to.

For private sector employers, the deadline to report would have been 4 April 2020 and for public sector employers it would have been 30 March.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not be investigating employers who fail to provide their gender pay gap data.

The announcement confirms that more than 3,000 employers have already done so.

Comment

Businesses are under a huge burden to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Employers may still wish to calculate (and publish) their gender pay gap to monitor their own progress in reducing the pay gap, but the removal of the deadline means that they can choose when they do this. Producing gender pay gap data can be a useful exercise and (if the pay gap is reducing and/or significant steps are being taken to address any gender pay disparity) could give positive publicity in these testing times.