UK: Gender Equality Action Plan: Government Research Published

Authors: Charles Urquhart, Corinna Harris, and Charlotte Stern

The Government has just published its research: “How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers” with steps for employers to follow.

Employers with over 250 employees in the UK have had to publish their gender pay gap since 2017.  The supporting statutory guidance provisions explain that all employers can choose to publish their gender action plan on their website, but take-up has been low.

To tackle this, the Employment Rights Bill provides that once the Bill becomes law, these gender equality action plans will become mandatory.

Ahead of this, and to support employers, the Government has just published its research: How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers which considers four areas and makes recommendations for each, including:

• Hiring and selection:
  • Offer flexible working by default in job adverts as a way to significantly increase applicant pools
  • Use structured interviews for recruitment and promotions as this tends to produce fairer outcomes
  • Make expectations around salaries and negotiations clear – the paper suggests employers should clearly state the salary range and whether it is negotiable. This may be quite a culture change for employers to get to grips with!
• Talent management, learning and development:
  • Increase transparency to promotion pay and reward processes: for example, be clear about what is involved to get a pay increase and demystify promotion processes.
• Inclusion and retention:
  • Recruiting a diverse workforce is only the start. To tackle pay inequity, retention is key. The research highlights that flexible working arrangements and generous parental leave policies can support retention and employers should ‘walk the talk’ to support take-up.
• Leadership and accountability:
  • Set SMART internal targets for gender representation and equality

Appoint diversity leads and/or diversity taskforces.

Key Action Points for Human Resources and In-house Counsel

The purpose of the research is to provide guidance to employers about how to create more effective action plans to tackle workplace inequalities.