Gender pay gap reporting: the what, how and when

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difference in the average earnings including overtime of the women and many
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in any given population and according to official data back in 2016 April 2016
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the gender pay gap for median earnings was nine point four percent for
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full-time employees so in effect men were earning nine point
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four percent mall and then female full-time employees when it came to
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part-time workers it was the other way around women were earning 6% more than
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part-time males and when you add both the full time and the part-time workers together you end up with women and
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earning 18 percent less than their male counterparts but of course only fair to
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point out that other gender pay gaps out there so when it comes to how much a
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boys and girls get in terms of pocket money according to research by the
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Halifax and on average boys in the UK receive 13% more in weekly pocket money
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than girls while parents give boys aged between 8 and 15 an average of 6 pounds
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and 93 a week and they give girls 6 pound 16 and why is there a gap there
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well according to research it may be because boys are slightly more likely to
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complain and ask for more compared to girls so whilst 44% of boys said they
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were prepared to ask for more only 39 percent of girls are going to do
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similarly similarly when it comes to how
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much men and women are prepared to pay for goods and services again there's a
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gap so the next research has been carried out in the States and it looked
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to what men and women pay for essentially identical products but which are marketed in them separately so
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princes we found that and girls baby clothes cost more than those for boys shirts for girls can cost
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13% more and toys marketed as girls cost 11% more than those the boys even if
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they were exactly the same toys in different colors the promise difference covers out that carries over into
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adulthood where women shirt surprise 15% more than men's shirts and women's
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shampoo products cost 48 percent more than products marketed to men similarly
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women pay 56 percent more for personal care products even when the ingredients
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are similar and when it comes to old age support and rages for women are 15% more
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than those for men and walking-sticks can cost 12% more the study found that
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when averaged across a lifetime women are paying 57 percent more for
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comparable products and similar studies carried out in the UK have found
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differences again both in terms of what men and women pay so for instance women
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tend to pay more for jeans or things such as raises so while there are
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various pay gaps and today we're going to be focusing on the difference in earnings and between men and women and
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I'll now pass on to Emma and Hugh to talk about their experiences thanks very
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much thank you thank you very much Charles very interesting to know that
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I'm earning less but paying more for things I've firm for those of you who've
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not heard me I'm a partner and ahead of them employment my specialist area is employment law and I work in a firm in
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Wales it's gender pay gap is something I've been interested in quite a long
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time for lots of equal pay cases and gender pay and equal pay are very
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separate things but obviously they're interlinked because they are all about the
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difference between the way that men and women are paid light Charles I've put in
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some opening stats in the first slide so again that headline figure of 18.1%
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which was the difference according to the Office of National Statistics last
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year now that figure has come down significantly since the ONS first
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started to collate this information they started in 1977 where they stat was
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between 7% so there is clear movement there one of the very interesting things though is that that headline figure
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doesn't tell the whole story and there is huge variation according to occupational group and age last summer
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there was a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and they looked at the figure for mothers so women who
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leave the workplace and then take some time out and return and actually the
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gender pay gap for that group of people goes up to 33% so that it are much much
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more obvious differential and then an
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interesting stat that I came across last summer as well another piece of research was that this whole idea of whether it
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is about men and women not asking there was a study that was done in Australia
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by the caste Business School where they see such examine whether it was because women weren't asking to pay rises in the
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same way as men and in their research was that in light for light cases women
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were 25% less likely to be given a pay rise than men in response to an Oscar
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they've actually made for me that statistic kind of demonstrates that this is a hugely complex area so what we have
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now is the government wanting to advance the cause around gender pay gap cut
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equal pay legislation since 1975 so for a long long time and yet we still have a
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very noticeable gender pay gap so what is happening is within the Equality Act
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2010 there was a power put in that would
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enable regulations to be made that would affect private and third sector employers and larger ones with 250 plus
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employees to publish gender pay info that provision was brought into force
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and we now have the final version of the draft regulations that will come into force very soon on the 6th of April this
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year employers who fall into the category of having more than 250 employees will have
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to publish their gender pay gap regulation information within 12 months
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of the regulations coming into force so by the 5th of April 2018 there is also a
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very similar obligation on public sector bodies again it's for those larger
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public sector bodies and those with 250 plus employees it only applies in
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England though not Scotland and Wales and there's a slight difference to those regulations there's a difference in
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relation to the date and there's an additional reporting GT which is all
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connected to the public sector equality Duty and the reporting obligations around those but the real focus from
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each day is on the private and third sector the voluntary sector employees lawyers what has to be published is six
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types of information the mean gender pay gap to the overall organization the
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median agenda pay gap and the difference between those of course is the mean is the is what I would think of as an
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average being that you add everything up and then divide it by the number but
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also the median which is the midpoint it's actually the median which is used
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by the Office of National Statistics because they think it is a more accurate
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way of doing it so that you get rid of the very lowest and the very highest
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which can skew the information but actually these are these regulations required both of those to be produced
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then there's a requirement to look at something called bonus gender pay
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information so specifically looking at bonus pay rather than general pay and
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again publishing the mean and the median of bonus gender pay gap around bonuses
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there's also an obligation to look at the proportion of male and female employees in your workforce that are
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receiving bonus payments so if you have more men receiving bonuses and obviously that will be a positive percentage that
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you would need to report on plus then there's an attempt to look at your overall pay range so what you do is you
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split your males and females up into quartiles and I'll show you a slide that
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actually gives a bit more detail around that and what this actually means in
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order to understand and start being able to do all of these calculations it's
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really important to understand sort of basic principles of when the Pay information is coming in when you have
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to do the pay information and it basically works on a snapshot principle for the gender pay gap so it's the idea
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of this snapshot date of a fifth of April in each year and you use that date to look at your pay that you're paying
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on that date every year the regulations
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use the concept of a relevant pay period and what that means is if you are an
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employer that pays monthly then it is the month's pay that includes whether
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month includes the fifth of April it is that pay period that you factor in for
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your gender pay information if you're an employer that pays weekly then it is the week in which the fifth of April Fool's
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and if you are looking at for weekly pay
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then it again is that four week period where the fifth of April falls into that
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period to that relevant pay period for your gender pay your hourly rate pay
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though many of the bonuses what you have to do is factor in your bonuses for the
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preceding 12 months up to the 5th of April each year so for the first year of reporting we're
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actually looking at the 12 months going back to the 6th of April 2016 and you
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should be too late in all of that bonus information up to the 5th of April 2017
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in order to understand who is captured by the obligation in the gender pay
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regulations you need to do a sum and calculate how many employees that you've got so the threshold figure is 250 and
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you look at that on your snapshot date so it's the 5th of April every year if
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you're part of a group structure then you treat each subsidiary company within the group quite separately the
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definition of employee for the purpose of these regulations is wider than
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employee under the employment rights Act it's the same definition that's used in
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the Equality Act which is an extended definition so it includes anyone who's
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actually employed under a contract of service so what we would think of as a normal employee but also includes
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apprentices and anybody that is employed on a contract to do work personally so
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that would capture freelance contractors that you might have engaged for you so
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when you're doing your numbers and working out who your 250 are then you
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have contractors freelance individuals who work on a basis of a single contract
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for an individual they will be captured casual workers would very likely to be
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included if they are employed with you on the 5th of April but obviously if
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they're not employed with you on the 5th of April that they are the sort of employees that come and go then that
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they would not necessarily count towards your 254 agency workers if they are not
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employed directly by you but employed by the agency then they are going to be
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captured by the agencies figures rather than you have to do them then there's a very specific provision
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for partners of law firms well firms they are definitely excluded somebody
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agencies ask the question would it include non-executive directors very
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potentially it would if they are employed under a contract to personally do work there's also a contact in the
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gender regulations that covers if
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there's a provision around who is counted and whether they are receiving
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full pay or not when the first regulations came out everything such as
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maternity pay will also be included in the definition of pay and so part of the feedback on those draft regulations was
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well this is going to skew the figures because if you've got a woman who's off on maternity we're receiving such a
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maternity pay obviously she's going to be earning less than full pay and therefore that is going to demonstrate a
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gender pay gap so the revised regulations recognize that you may have
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employees who are absent on leave and receiving less than full pay and that this could skew the overall picture so
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the new regulation had a definition of full pay relevant employees this is any
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employees who are on leave during the relevant pay period so that period of
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pay whether it's monthly weekly for weekly whatever that includes the 5th of
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April and who are not during that period in receipt of full pay the regulations
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specifically refer to annual leave sick leave family leave from maternity leave paternity leave parental leave all of
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those types of family leaves plus it also refers to special leaves or other types of sabbatical leaves that you
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might include the full pay relevant employees it's important to remember are
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only excluded for when you're calculating your average hourly rates so
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when you're looking at your mean and median comparison with your hourly rates and your quartile provision they're not
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excluded when you're counting your 206 the threshold and they're not included in relation to bonus pay so looking at
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some of the really important definitions and understanding what we actually have to count towards pay regulations very
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clear pay includes basic pays includes all kinds of allowances so if somebody's
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getting paid an ounce because they do extra things additional duties that will count any kind of London wasting
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geographical weighting that will count to get a car allowance that will count a
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market forces factor premium or any kind of equipment allowance that counts of
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pay pay for piecework we'll also can but a usually will be either also you like
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to have somebody on basic pay or getting piece work paid pay for leave as long as
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it's full pay and then any kind of shift premium pay it's a distinction here
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because overtime pay is absolutely not included but pay for working at
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different times of work so we can shift premium or an active hours premium that
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would count excluded then is overtime pay expenses the value of any salary
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sacrifice schemes which does seem potentially somewhat harsh because if these are schemes that employees are
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choosing to be part of actually you have no control over whether it's men or
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women that are choosing to be part of those schemes but you have to somebody as possible salary sacrifice scheme then
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it is only there that the pay that remains that that is counted any
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benefits in kind redundancy pay termination pay all of that sort of pay
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is excluded and what you're working on is that is gross pay so before any deductions are made bonus pay is defined
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and bonus pay includes payments that relate to profit sharing productivity
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performance incentive or Commission and it's whatever form in which is paid so
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it might actually be hard cash might be VAT so it might be something to do with
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shares again calculated before any deductions are made from that and with
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bonuses what you're concerned about is not when not the period to which the
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bonus is attributable but the time that the employee actually receives the
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benefit of the bonus at the time the bonus is actually paid I think somebody
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did ask do you include bonuses for those that have left the business no you
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definitely don't and and should the bonus be full-time equivalent no it
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shouldn't you look at the actual amount of the bonus so I'm picking up some
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questions as they come along if they're in the right place but we'll pick up all the questions later I'm sure the first
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thing that you have to do when you're coming to do your calculations is calculate the gross hourly rate of pay
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for your mail and your female employees and the regulations set out six steps of
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what you have to do that would it be helpful to actually do that basically the first thing they say you do is
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identify all the payments that the individuals have received in the
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relevant pay period so you factor in everything first of all then you take
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away anything that is not pay you then prorate any bonus pay now just a little
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bit of time explaining this if you pay bonuses during that reference period
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they get captured in the gross hourly rate of pay if you don't pay your
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bonuses around about April time then you don't have to worry about them for your gross hourly rate of pay it's only if
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they get paid in your April relevant pay period but to reflect the fact that you
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know you're counting a potentially whole annual bonus and that will skew the figures compared to companies that don't
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pay their bonuses at that time of year you are allowed to prorate the bonus pay
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so you're allowed to only take into account twelve of the bonus figure when you're doing your growth at a rate
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of pay calculations so once you've worked out what you're including into
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your number you add it all together you get the total pay of the individuals for
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that relevant pay period you're then meant to divide it out so
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you get to a weekly amount and the regulations very helpfully tell us how
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we are meant to treat a month and how we're meant to treat a year in order that we're all working from the same
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numbers we're factoring in you know February having 28 days whereas April
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has 30 and other months have more days once you've got your weekly amount you
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then divide by the number of working hours in a week and there are some
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specific provisions about working hours as I said previously all overtime is
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excluded so if somebody is doing overtime whether it's paid or unpaid you
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are not meant to factor that in at all for a normal weekly working hour
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employee you are supposed to base this on the number of hours that is stated in
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their contract and employment on the snapshot date so it's the number of hours for the 5th of April each year if
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it's somebody who doesn't have weekly working hours then what you're required to do is an averaging process very
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similar to what we're used to in the idea of the employment rights act and averaging out pay over the last 12 weeks
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up to the date of the relevant pay period but excluding people who
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excluding any weeks when somebody hasn't worked at all so for some of your casual employees you might be if you've got
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bank employees who might work one week but then not the next potentially you'll be averaging over quite a significant
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period of time because you need to find 12 weeks that they have actually received pay if you can't find 12 weeks
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where they've received pay then you can use the best number of weeks that you can have going to the actual
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calculations I have included in the slides exactly what the calculations are so
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that you can see these I'm not necessarily going to talk through all of them because they get quite repetitive but once you've worked out your gross
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hourly pay you then have to work out the average of it you then work out the
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average for men at the average for women and you express that as a percentage so
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if you look at the bits in italics on bottom of this slide this explains that
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an employer is a mean hourly rate of pay for all males full pay equivalent
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employees are fifteen and twenty five this employer also has pays women slightly less when looking at the mean
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rate of thirteen point forty two so once you convert that into a percentage it's
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a twelve percent mean gender pay gap you do exactly the same thing then for the
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median hourly pay the same percentage calculation and here we have somebody
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who's when they've worked out their median hourly rate to pay men are getting 16 pounds women are getting 13
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point 50 means that the overall gender pay gap there is 15.6 percent we then do
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the same for bonuses and it's again mean
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and median I think somebody did ask canoeing do you include those that have
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left the business since the last bonus pay date levers can be excluded just to
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answer that question so you're only having two even though you might be calculating bonuses for the whole year
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you only have to do the calculations for the people who are still there on the 5th of April you do the mean and then
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the median you also then do the proportions receiving bonus pay so that
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this is a symbol over the 12 months up to the snapshot date you work out the
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number of emails that have received a bonus and what percentage of the overall mail work for site is number of females
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that are receiving a bonus and what percentage of the overall work for that is and then work those out so you get to
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percentages so in this case an employer has 302 male employees 255 had a bonus
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whereas the 258 of the 258 employees are new 215 of received bonus so there's a
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slight differential in the percentages there eighty four point four percent of male employees have boners compared to
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eighty three point three percent then the proxy one of the most interesting
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calculations that you have to do is to split your employees into quartiles it
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wasn't clear at all in the first draft of the regulations exactly what this meant but we now do know what you're
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doing is you're splitting your employees into four quartiles based on the number
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of employees so in the example we've got 322 full pay relevant employees you
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divide 320 two by four so you end up each of your quartiles is going to have
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a quarter of the 322 so it's going to be right about eighty eighty one as you'll
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see on the next slide you then rank your employees based on the gross hourly rate
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of pay and work out for the lowest paid ones they fall into the first quarter or
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in your lowest quartile the next quarter going to your your middle your next
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quartile up and then your next quarter next quartile you can have some difficulties if you've got people that
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are paid the same and where they cross those boundaries you're meant to resolve that by making
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sure you do that in a gender balanced way and then what you come out with is you look at the number of male and
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female employees bizarre in each of the pay ends and just to show you what that
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looks like what you don't have to do is say what the pay bands are a tool you don't have to say what the range of pay
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is for your quartiles you simply refer to them as the lower lower middle upper middle and upper quartile but in this
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example of those 332 the 81 lowest paid
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employees 48 men and 33 a female so actually we've got
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so gender pay gap there where we've got more lowest-paid people in this
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organization a male compared with female when we jumped however to the upper quartile we can see that there's 80
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employees in the upper quartile 58 a male and 22 a female so the decision is
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reversed quite considerably that although the lowest paid employees in
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this organization of men actually the highest paid employees in this organization are predominantly men as
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well in terms of when and how this has
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to be done we have to do it within 12 months so within 12 months of the
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snapshot date each year you have to publish the information on your website
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in the UK in a manner accessible to all employees and the public which
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potentially means that it's searchable so it must be something that's quite easy to find on your website and you
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have to put on that that information has to remain there for at least three years so you will in through your time have
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three years worth of data there's also have a going to be a government website we haven't yet seen
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it it's not been launched as yet which we understand is going to have a league table type approach so that all
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companies will report and they'll somehow you'll be seen somewhere in that table as to how you can be compared and
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benchmarked against other companies when you publish you also have to accompany the statistics by a signed statement of
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truth and that has to be signed by somebody both senior in your organisation and the regulations going
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to let us detail that who that is the big question for me is for so what
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what is the enforcement mechanism what what are the consequences if you don't do it it is a name and shame game only
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there is absolutely no financial penalty that can befall your organization if you
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do not publish the information there is some suggestion that the EHR see could
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use the information to take enforcement action against you but that's certainly not the message
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that's coming out of the HRC and they're not suggesting that that is part of what
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they are thinking of doing at all there's also the possibility that the
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information could be used by employees to pursue employment tribunal claims around sex discrimination equal pay but
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really what the statistics produce are something that is very difficult to see
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how that is helpful to a particular individual who wants to pursue a claim and I would query whether or not they're
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even enough to shift the burden of proof what I think they could be the effect of
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that though could be that employees will be more aware of your gender pay situation so if they are concerned about
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their pay then the fact that you're publishing might encourage them to ask some more questions but I mean I've
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delivered this seminar to a number of different HR people over the last year
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and lots of them have a are not sure yet whether they're going to publish there
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has been some very helpful latest guidance that come out in the recent in recent weeks published jointly with the
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government equalities office and have very good step by step guide to complying with the regulations also has
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some complex some clarity around some of the complex area so one of the questions was kind of gender identity which which
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category do people fall in and all that they say about us is that you must treat
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people sensitively it also goes on to explain a little bit about the difference between gender pay gap and
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equal pay I'm noting that they are very different things Equal Pay is about people who are
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working at the same level comparing their pay whereas gender pay is about people who are lumped in together across
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the whole organization but it also goes on to consider some of the causes of the
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gender pay gap and actually tries to encourage employers to be very proactive and adopt a plan to take steps to reduce
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the gender pay gap going forward final thoughts
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from me before we get answer questions check with your HR system can cope do
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your figures as soon as possible don't be left guessing you don't have to publish them straightaway but I think if
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you have an idea of what your figures are likely to look through you can think about this internally as an organization
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and what you want how best to present them one of the things you might also
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look into is whether you can present the historical position so you can actually show that being some improvement in your
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organization everybody is saying you need to put a narrative around the figures so your HR professionals and
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also your marketing professionals advance want to think very carefully about how you position this figure this
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figures where that fits in into what you the messages you want to say about your
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organization if you can see any obvious equal pay issues then now you've got
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trying to fix them before you have to publish I'm not sure though that just doing this exercise really does help you
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identify the equal pay issues the way you've got like for like who are not receiving the same level of pay but for
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often you tend to know about those anyway and then should you consider longer-term solutions and adopt an
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action plan you know that's something for you as organizations but to think
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about and whether it's you know how it how important this is for that for the business the AEF guidance talks about
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there being very clear economic benefits to being diverse and to looking at these
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things positively that's me as a lawyer giving my perspective and telling you
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about how the regulations work what we thought would be very helpful is to actually give an HR directors
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perspective and find out what Adrian thinks that at all so I'm going to ask
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gage in a couple of questions which is amply just explain to begin with Adrian
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and something about opus international consulting limited and what you do what
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employees you have yes certainly we are a civil structural traffic and transportation
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transportation engineering consultancy we've got approximately 500 UK staff
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operating over 12 locations so essentially we provide consulting design
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information on those types of projects and you've begun to look at whether or
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not you can collect the information and do the calculations how easy have you found that process the proposals
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themselves seem quite complex and there's actually quite a lot of detail to get into and understand but having
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said that I can understand why why it's been written the way it has we've we've
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been able to report on this fairly easily once we've fully understood the requirements and we've established our
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starting position fairly easily and and
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where are you in your thinking about whether you event publish we've not reached a final decision on that but the
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current thinking is that we are we're likely to publish we want to be
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transparent and open with our with our own staff and also externally we think
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it's important to do that final decision yet to be taken but my feeling is we would be likely to publish and obviously
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if you are going to publish will do you're not thinking of just publishing the stats as a sort of bold without any
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explanation to sitting behind them what what through thoughts are you having
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around the narrative we absolutely will need a narrative as a as an engineering
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company we're already aware that we need to attract more females into engineering
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so we have an imbalance in terms of the number of females in our business versus
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the number of males we have 26 percent of our workforce of female and where
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we're fairly active in trying to address that and for that reason we need to
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really put a good narrative alongside the figures and we perhaps have to educate our own
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staff if they view this information around what the gender pay gap is actually reporting and then it isn't for
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example the same as an equal pay gap it's a really important consideration and we need to give some some real
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thought to how we convey the information
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and thank you very much a dream and we're opened questions now if anybody's
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got any eyes Charles you'll learn you'll filled those and put them yes sure yes
35:59
thanks very much Cameron Adrian your very interesting
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presentations I think one of the questions that I noticed was around what
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happens if people receive a bonus we shade in sacrifice into a pension scheme
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how is that question dealt that issue dealt with I think you have to count the
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bonus I've I've just been looking at what the 8's guidance says about it the
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regulations don't deal with it directly but the starting point is how the what's
36:43
on the pay slip and so you start with if pay is then being deducted into pension
36:50
I think that means that the bonus would count but I think I think that that's an
36:55
excellent question that I thought oh I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to answer that I think that's detail but I would my instinctive reaction is is to
37:02
take bonus count in that even if it's waved into pension scheme another
37:08
question was around company cars and also the option of getting a car
37:15
allowance so would you how would you look at company cars as part of the
37:20
gender pay gap reporting and how would you do with those --is-- instances where people have opted for an hour an hour
37:27
for an allowance rather than for a car itself and the regulations are very very clear
37:35
the if you are paying a car allowance that is factored into pay but if you are
37:41
if other people are taking company cars then you exclude that because it's a benefit in kind so I think the way that
37:48
you would address that is explaining that in your narrative if that is
37:55
creating any kind of gender pay queueing effect I mean whether or not it's
38:02
creating a skewing effect will depend on the proportion of men and women that are doing one or the other if you've got all
38:09
women taking allowances and all men taking the company cars that actually might seem like ended up having a very
38:15
positive effect another question was around bonuses and what happens if those
38:23
parts of that bonus is paid in share options or restricted shares how would
38:28
you value that in terms of gender pay gap reporting would you kind of value
38:36
realized of the year or the grant value and again the regulations aren't very
38:43
clear as to what to do but yes that fact is was I I would agree but
38:49
that's it it's the point in which it's paid so what if you are so for example
38:55
if you're assuring chopin's do they have a particular value if you're referring options in shares where you assume that
39:01
they have a particular market value which has lasted what the the tax
39:06
position will be based on so it's that market value at the time of issue all
39:11
the time of grant if it's a share option so the shares will be at vesting then yes so what happens and if it wasn't
39:20
part of the bonus scheme you just got shares separately with that then the part of pain well now that's a very good
39:28
question if the regulations aren't clear
39:36
their not excluded from pay but it is only bonus pay but it where securities
39:45
so paying in the form of securities includes chairs so I mean if it wasn't
39:53
if it was a regular part of somebody's remuneration package that was just as a
39:59
matter of course I think it would be excluded from hey and letter with a
40:04
bonus relationship to it well there'll
40:11
be opportunities for you to check this at happily two-stage MO we can add a
40:16
mainly in the webinar as appropriate and then the question was around what
40:23
happens to companies that are employing people and overseas so either they've
40:28
got British people working overseas or they've got people who are from overseas
40:34
working in the UK and were those people dealt with I am in the original draft of
40:41
the regulations there was a very specific provision to say that it with UK based employees but that has
40:47
disappeared which means that the current
40:52
commentators are thinking a twink leading me that if an employee could
40:58
bring a claim under the Equality Act notwithstanding that they're based overseas they will count towards the 250
41:07
threshold and they will count in terms of their numbers you need to include
41:13
them in the pay information right we've
41:20
got a few questions around bonuses for instance just to clarify if an annual
41:26
bonus is paid in December each year and this chap so what and was wondering
41:31
whether it's rising think that only one twelfth of that bonus is taken into account for calculation purposes or is
41:38
it across the year no idiot this is exactly that this is it's a
41:43
bizarre kind of odd bit about the regulations unless you pay your bonuses
41:49
around April so the pay period that includes the fifth of April you do not
41:56
have to put your bonus pay into your average pay calculation only if you pay
42:04
your bonuses in April that you can't bonus pay into that calculation so a very sensible way of avoiding having to
42:10
do that would be to make sure you don't pay your bonuses in April so what
42:17
happens if you don't if you pay your bonuses in November then how would you tell that you would calculate it over
42:22
the year yeah your your average gender your average hourly rate of pay you can
42:29
ignore bonuses for that purpose but when you look at your bonus pay it your bonus
42:35
pay is bonuses that are paid in the twelve months preceding the 5th of April so if you've paid your bonuses in
42:43
December 2016 it's that bonus pay that will count that you'll need to report on by the 5th of
42:50
April 2018 and if that query is what hat
42:56
is reinstating for Ireland from June to pick out reporting as a very simple many
43:02
of our members we're working in Ireland and some will be based in the Republic
43:08
and others will be based in Northern Ireland and what types of surveys specifically also covers as you know
43:14
this you are in to earn people new international workers as well yeah I mean it's it's the UK come from the
43:21
company that is in the UK that is captured by the regulation so any any
43:28
subsidy companies there's a base in southern ireland will not be captured by
43:35
the regulations because they're outside of the UK legislation but if you've got
43:40
somebody who is seconded to go and work out there then obviously they will count
43:46
if they have a contract with a UK company um another query that some
43:53
organizations allow their employees to convert their bonus into company shares is if counted in the bonus calculation
44:01
civilly be excluded um shares any bonus
44:06
that is paid whether it's through the form of shares or through the form of cash
44:11
has to be counted and then you have that issue about how you actually value the
44:17
shares it's easier actually you're converting a cash bonus into shares
44:22
because you know what the value of the cash bonus is right another we're getting quite a lot of these questions
44:28
what I know that's it what is it that you've talked about the definition
44:33
subsidiary what it so you've talked about subsidiaries what is the definition of a subsidiary and how would
44:40
that differ from the PA ye tax reference
44:45
what I mean by subsidiary is a coop as a Companies Act subsidiary so one of the
44:53
complications I think I've got one client who they have a very complex
45:00
payroll arrangement so parent company has an 250 plus employees but if one of
45:09
the subsidiary company so were securing UK something else only has 20 employees
45:17
then that company can be excluded but parent company would still have to factor it in for their employees so you
45:26
need to know if you've got a complex group structure exactly which individuals are employed by which group
45:33
company it's got the tax payroll reference and who actually manages the
45:38
payroll is not part of the consideration at all so we just had another question
45:45
that out adding sits where they've got and three offices in Scotland Wales and
45:51
Northern Ireland each with fewer than ten employees presumably there it would be case
45:57
aggregating that information together to get the total numbers but let me just go
46:04
back to that question sorry so it was are they all they're based in
46:11
the different places but are they employed by the same company yes there
46:16
are three small offices yes so treat small offices each with
46:21
they would be included providing overall so the English office have 250
46:31
altogether yes thank you thank you for clarifying the vast majority of employer
46:37
in England and let the Scottish wealth and organising offices are obstructed
46:43
there is a structure so it is actually a separate company so there's um whatever
46:48
the company is Wales Limited then the ten or less than ten will be included so
46:56
yeah so you're all the same organization now is this a private sector and for
47:03
voluntary sector organisation as long as it's a private sector or voluntary sector organisation that is the case
47:08
slightly more complex if it's a public authority because of the way the public sector regulations being brought in
47:15
they're not necessary capturing Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland in the public
47:21
sector another question was around the
47:27
length that you'd be really expected to go to to kind of identify consultants on
47:34
the payroll yeah that's a really good question actually - that something I should have mentioned which is where
47:40
you've got consultants there is a specific exemption in the regulations
47:46
where if you can't earn these videos you need to identify them but if you don't
47:53
have the relevant pay information and it's not reasonable for you to obtain it
47:58
we can exclude them from the calculations so they will count towards
48:04
your 250 but they won't if you don't
48:10
know what's in it for example you don't monitor they're exactly what their hours are that they work then you've got the
48:19
definition not reasonably practicable for you to obtain the data then you can exclude them from your calculations
48:26
another thing would be another query has been around long term incentive plans which you know typically
48:33
for executives would they be treated as part of a bonus or again with any part
48:39
of pay or long term long term incentive plans are bonuses so you need to look at
48:46
when payment under those plans is actually made so it's not the period
48:53
during for which the incentive is earned that might be you know there might be a three year period over which somebody's
49:01
performance or contribution to the company's performance is measured you don't look at the whole three years you
49:08
look at when some sort of payment under that incentive plan is made whether or not that's in the form of cash or
49:14
securities another question has is
49:20
around how to deal with for instance casual employees who haven't got a total
49:26
of twelve weeks pay during the year to average and presume that could also apply to new employees as well it's you
49:33
don't have to do the best you can but you use as many weeks as you possibly can in order to prorate it that's
49:39
something that's quite well dealt with in the AAS guidance and so what you
49:50
talked about the pub that the public sector and how that may differ in Wales
49:56
for instance or Scotland what all this other main difference is there the
50:03
reason why there are differences in Wales and Scotland are most likely Northern Ireland is because the
50:09
regulations are being brought in through the public sector equality gt obligation and so that's actually devolved so it's
50:18
the Scottish government and the Welsh government that have the power to bring in the equivalent regulations to apply
50:25
to Scottish and Welsh and the same in Northern Ireland public authorities
50:32
there and they haven't yet done it and that with somebody from based in Wales
50:37
so I'm looking I'm keen to find out when it's happening it's in miles and and that with somebody from
50:44
the last government the other day and there is no current plans because they already have much more onerous reporting
50:50
obligations under the public sector equality duty regulations regime force in Wales already and so you think that
51:00
they will keep Sidra public sector organization in Wales you'll use the
51:07
existing requirements rather than the ones that are going to come up from the
51:12
gender pay gap yes I think so but I think I think there will also be an
51:17
underlying pressure on organizations that if they've got this information or they can easily put this information
51:23
together then they should be producing it anyway in Wales the within two weeks
51:30
of the draft regulations being published all of the local authorities in Wales had Freedom of Information requests
51:37
asking for this information so I think in the end the same standard information
51:45
will be required of all organizations providing they've got more than two engine 50 employees well I think you've
51:53
got quite a lot of other questions as well but I think what it will be useful is after the end of the webinar will
51:59
you'll be able to the opportunity there to kind of go through some of these and
52:04
will be able to put them on our website and let people when we email out and
52:11
people who listen to the webinar to let them know that it's now available on our website and people also the opportunity
52:17
to and see how you responded to some of those q and A's and they we haven't been
52:23
able to get through as well as some of the ones that we've already discussed in case that and you'd like to add some
52:28
more fanfic ation so I think I would I would say that one question there about
52:33
Housing Association Association definitely count as private organisations for this purpose yes
52:41
though I suppose they were even if they had been volunteer that have been picked up they would have been has picked up anyway wouldn't they I suppose yeah
52:48
they're not public authorities the organisations that account the authorities of those that are listed
52:53
in the schedules to the Freedom of Information Act so anybody is not listed there it is
52:59
included right well I'd like to thank
53:05
you Emma and also Adrienne as well for presenting this afternoon I've found it
53:12
quite interesting both for your insights Emma and how your organization Adrienne is is dealing with these issues and just
53:21
to reiterate that the webinar will be available on the CIP DS website and we
53:28
will be emailing participants to let them know when the webinar is on our
53:35
website and for you to download and just to let also you to remind you that the
53:41
CIP will be having a reward sig webinar in May time and to look out for details
53:48
about that so I like to wish you all the best for the rest of the day and thank
53:55
you for listening to the CIP D's webinar thank you