Although all relevant organisations have now reported their gender pay gap for 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating those which submitted “implausible data”.
This includes organisations that reported a 50/50 split of male and female employees and claims of no pay gap from the lowest-paid to the highest-paid roles.
The Commission is therefore warning employers to check their numbers carefully before they publish to avoid being in breach of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. This requires any organisation in England, Scotland and Wales with over 250 employees to report and publish specific information about its gender pay gap by April each year.
The EHRC is currently writing to 100 employers who have published suspicious looking data, asking them to explain the rationale for their figures and requesting their payroll data.
If it finds that they have submitted inaccurate data, they will be required to re-submit with accurate data and sign legal agreements. Ultimately they could be taken to court and fined if they fail to comply.
The EHRC has also announced that, following enforcement action, all 10,500 organisations required by the regulations to submit their gender pay gap have now done so. This followed formal investigations into six organisations which not only failed to meet the deadline, but also did not respond to warnings by the Commission that they were in breach of the law.
These organisations have now entered into formal legal agreements with the Commission, committing to ensure that they report on time for the next five years. If they do not do so, the EHRC has already said that it will take further action which could involve taking them to court.
In total, the Commission notified 46 private sector and four public sector organisations of its intention to open statutory investigations into their failure to report their gender pay gap data on time. It also publicly named them. This included three “repeat offenders” which had failed to report on time two years in a row.
To read what the EHRC is doing in more detail, go to: https://equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/blogs/gender-pay-gap-reporting-no-excuses