Edinburgh firm launches gender pay gap reporting service

In February this year, new legislation was passed requiring organisations with 250 or more employees to publish their gender pay gap by 4 April 2018.

The new rules saw insurance giant Aviva send a letter to more than a dozen subcontractors that had failed to sign up to gender equality initiatives such as the 30% Club campaign and the Women in Finance Charter. The letter, which was sent to businesses including recruitment firms, suppliers and providers of insurance services, threatened to terminate their contracts.

And in January, international risk management and insurance brokerage Willis Towers Watson announced that they will require fund managers to provide data about the gender composition of their firms.

The new rules mean organisations are only required to produce six metrics, but Staffmetrix has found that the requirements maybe more complex than initially anticipated.

To simplify the reporting process, Staffmetrix has developed and launched an analytics platform and service to help organisations prepare their calculations and undertake further analysis of their data to support a narrative.

The company has also published two guides: “An introduction to gender pay gap reporting” and “Considerations in preparing for gender pay gap reporting”.

According to Staffmetrix CEO Anthony Horrigan, the reporting for many organisations is taking longer than initially anticipated.

“While there are no financial penalties for not reporting, management should take their gender pay gap reports seriously and consider the wider positive aspects”, he said. “Even if an organisation has a larger gender pay gap than its peers, the report will provide the opportunity to highlight this to key stakeholders and inform them how the organisation will address it in the coming year. By doing so, they can demonstrate a proactive approach that will enhance the perception of their brand.”

The product is designed to help organisations turn their raw data into key insights which will provide context for the narrative. By using their platform to analyse the data, Staffmetrix can offer unique contextualisation that might not be readily available from other sources.

Mr Horrigan also added: “There are two aspects to the reporting. The organisation’s current situation and perhaps more importantly, how the organisation can modify its trajectory to achieve a greater balance in gender diversity that will ultimately lead to improvements in productivity and attractiveness as a place to work – and do business with.

“Any changes must be evidence based otherwise it’s unlikely the organisation will know what to enhance to achieve progress. Examples include recruitment policy, talent management, flexible working practices or how management behaviours and goals are managed and measured.”