Work It: HK Employment Update – December update In this month's round-up of key employment and HR developments, we look at: • • • • • • •
Gender pay gap reporting: final draft regulations now out Uber drivers: Employment Tribunal rules that they are not self-employed Whistleblowing and corporate governance "Gay cake" case: implications for businesses What's on the horizon? Autumn Statement, executive pay and more Howard Kennedy Employment in the news Events
Gender pay gap reporting: final regulations now out After a long wait, the Government has published the final version of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. The basic regime remains unchanged from the previous version: businesses with 250 or more employees will need to publish the mean and median hourly pay gap for their male and female employees, based on the pay period in which a specific date in April each year falls (called the “snapshot date”). The first snapshot date will now be 5 April 2017, with the first reports due on 4 April 2018. Businesses must also publish the annual bonus gap between men and women (again using the snapshot date) together with the proportion of male and female employees who received a bonus that year, and the numbers of men and women in each of four pay quartiles.
However, there are some important changes in the final Regulations: Who counts as an employee? The Regulations now clarify that the wide definition of "employee" used in the Equality Act 2010 applies to the Regulations too. This includes workers and some self-employed contractors, meaning that more businesses will be caught. However, partners and LLP members are specifically excluded. Employers may also exclude from their calculations pay data for workers and contractors if the employer does not have the pay data (e.g. if a contractor is not paid through the payroll) and it is not reasonably practicable for the employer to obtain it.
What counts as "pay"? The final Regulations require employers to publish the mean and median hourly pay gap only for employees on full pay during the relevant pay period, not those on reduced pay due to holiday, sick leave, maternity, paternity, adoption, parental or shared parental leave or other forms of leave. This clarification is helpful, as these figures could otherwise skew the data.
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