The Gender Pay Gap? It’s not just the BBC that needs to worry…

The big stooshie over what the BBC pays its stars made for interesting reading last week, and anyone from the third sector who thinks this bad news story has no bearing on what we do, should think again… Last week’s BBC Annual Report and Accounts not only showed seven figure salaries for a number of household names, it also revealed potential discrimination and a huge gender pay gap between its biggest stars. Two thirds of the BBC’s highest paid personalities are men. While the third sector may not have an equivalent Chris Evans (paid up to £2.5m), or a Claudia Winkleman (paid just £500,000…), we do have the potential to be caught out by increased scrutiny of what we pay our staff. The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year, showing how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees. The Act applies to employers in both the private and voluntary sector, and will cover many large charities in Scotland with large workforces. Charities working in the social care and health service sectors, and in housing associations, should already be preparing their information. The first reports are due before April 2018, so if you’re a third sector employer with a large workforce, you’ll need to publish the information on your website and on a government site. This means that any potential gender pay gap in your organisation will be publicly available – to the general public, your beneficiaries, and to potential funders and donors. The gender pay gap in this country is 9.4% for full time employees, and unfortunately is statistically worse in the third sector. This legislation is another attempt in a long running effort to deal with inequality in pay between the sexes. Thgouh depressingly, a report by consultants Deloitte estimated that the pay gap would not be eradicated until 2069. There are many factors that affect pay disparity, such as more women than men working part-time, career gaps due to maternity leave and a lack of women in senior roles. But if the lowest paid section of your workforce is mostly female, you should be thinking how you can do your bit to close the gender pay gap.