Following the women's march over the weekend, in which hundreds of thousands of women globally took to the streets to march for women's rights, it seems apt that only last week the Government published the draft Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

The draft regulations extend the duty to publish annual gender pay gap reports to public sector employers with over 250 employees. The draft regulations broadly reflect the draft gender pay gap regulations published in December last year, which apply to private sector employers with over 250 employees.

However, there are a couple of key differences. Specifically, the public sector duty will take effect as part of the existing public-sector equality duty, rather than as a standalone requirement. Whilst the stipulated 'snapshot' date for relevant private sector employers is 5 April, the 'snapshot' date for public sector employers will be 31 March.

As we've previously noted, the Government's response paper issued in December did deal with a number of the outstanding issues relating to gender pay gap reporting. However, there are still unanswered questions and it is hoped that the Government will issue further guidance before the gender pay gap regulations come into force. It is currently anticipated that they will come into force by April 2017.

Employers should be carefully considering whether or not they are likely to be caught by the new regulations and be carrying out some initial analysis to determine what their gender pay gap is likely to look like. Employers may wish to consider whether there could be a benefit to changing bonus structures or bonus payment dates under any plans they operate, if their current arrangements are likely to inflate their pay gap.

Ultimately the aim of gender pay gap reporting is for employers to show that they are making progress in closing their gender pay gap, year on year. Employers will be assessed against their industry peers, and websites have already been set up to enable stakeholders to undertake a comparison exercise. Whilst voluntary under the current draft regulations, narratives could be a useful tool for employers to explain any pay gaps and to set out what steps they are taking to improve their statistics.

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