Despite the delay, gender pay gap reporting matters more than ever

In a normal year, the deadline for most organisations to submit their gender pay gap reporting is the 4^th April. But as this year has been anything but normal, the deadline has been extended to 5^th October. And while some may argue a delay was warranted, it’s also ironic – because the pandemic has amplified the issues behind the gender pay gap, and made this information more critical than ever.

All the evidence suggests that the pandemic is turning back the clock on workplace equality, in a variety of ways. In the first lockdown, IFS research showed that mothers were 47% more likely to have lost their job or quit, and 14% more likely to be furloughed, than fathers; they also bore the brunt of home-schooling and spent two hours a day more on childcare. More recently, a report by the Fawcett Society noted that 1 in 3 working mothers have lost work or hours due to childcare during the pandemic, and that 43% of working women are worried about their job or prospects for promotion post-Covid.

Additionally, women are more likely to work in low-paid roles, and in sectors in which part-time jobs are more widely available, such as hospitality and retail. And these are the very sectors that have been decimated by the pandemic; by the end of 2020, for example, the hospitality sector had lost around 660,000 jobs.

So as we seek to build back better, we need to make sure that women, who have been so badly affected by the pandemic, are included in the recovery. And working to close the gender pay gap will be an important part of that process.

Three ways companies can close their gender pay gap

At its heart, the gender pay gap is really a gender progression gap. And, as we’ve noted previously, three of the four reasons behind the gap can be tackled by flexible working:

• There are more men in senior roles than women – which can be solved by designing flexibility into roles at all levels within an organisation, creating pathways for employees who need to work less than a full week.

• Women ‘choose’ to work in lower paid roles and sectors (or, more realistically, they are unable to do otherwise, because they need the flexibility that these sectors offer) – which could be overcome by opening up traditionally male sectors to flexible working.

• Childcare responsibilities fall more heavily on women – which is a societal issue, but will change if part-time and flexible roles are as attractive to, and openly offered to, career driven men as well as women.

One positive outcome of the pandemic has been that fathers have been more hands-on; the Resolution Foundation have noted the possibility that “a permanent shift towards more flexible working will remove some of the norms whereby mothers are more likely to work part-time than their male partners.” Ensuring that part-time and flexible roles are well-paid, but critically also with progression opportunities, will help.

It’s also important to remember that when we talk about flexible working, we don’t just mean the remote arrangements that have been the focus of the last year. To really help women progress, we need more, better part-time roles, at all levels, advertised with their flexibility up front. Currently only 22% of jobs are advertised as flexible, and a miniscule 8% are specifically advertised as part time; clearly, there is much to be done in this area.

With six months until the new deadline, there’s time to take action

So although the delay means we won’t have access to up-to-date gender pay gap data as soon as we would like, it does also mean that organisations have six extra months to take stock of their post-pandemic position – and, most importantly, take action.

If you are keen to stop the rollback of women’s workplace equality, and make a dent in your gender pay gap, you need to take a positive, proactive approach to flexible working, in line with the points noted above. And we can help.

We have a track record of helping clients improve gender equality, and are frequently cited in gender pay gap action plans. Our Flex Positive Programme has been specifically designed to help organisations become future fit, by developing a sustainable flexible working strategy for the post-Covid workplace. It takes around six months to complete; to find out more, do get in touch.

Published March 2021