Work It: Employment Update – March 2017 In this month's round-up of key employment and HR developments, we look at: • Gender pay gap reporting: draft guidance now out • Employee and worker status: Are your contracts watertight? • Data subject access requests: Can an employer refuse to comply with a request which is made for the purposes of litigation? • On the horizon… • Howard Kennedy Employment: news and events
Gender pay gap reporting: ACAS guidance now released With the gender pay gap reporting regulations due to come into force in April this year, we now have the draft guidance which accompanies the Regulations. This is available on the ACAS website. Please note that a number of the worked examples of calculations contain errors, which will hopefully be corrected before the guidance is finalised. The guidance provides helpful clarification in a number of areas, including:
• Transgender staff: There had been some debate about how employers should deal with transgender staff. The guidance clarifies that the Regulations should not result in employees being singled out and questioned about their gender and that if gender identification provided for HR or payroll purposes is regularly kept updated, employers can use that information. Where that information is not available or may be unreliable, the guidance encourages employers to inform employees that gender pay gap reporting is taking place and invite employees to update their recorded gender if required. If an employee does not identify as being of either gender, the guidance states that they may be omitted from the calculations (although this is not reflected in the Regulations). • Pensions: The guidance clarifies that employer pension contributions are not included in any of the calculations.
• Contractors: The Regulations contain an exception in relation to individuals who are not employees but who are engaged under a contract personally to carry out work for the business. Details of such contractors can be excluded from gender pay calculations if it is not reasonably practicable for the employer to obtain the data and they do not already hold it. The guidance clarifies that when entering into new contracts with individual contractors, the business should seek to include a term in the contract requiring the contractor to provide the information needed for compliance with the Regulations.
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