The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have launched a strategy to reduce pay gaps in Britain.
Fair Opportunities for All (pdf), published in August 2017, sets out ‘what needs to change and who needs to take action.’
Governments, agencies and employers are encouraged to take action across all six of these areas to drive change:
1) Unlock the earning potential of education by:
- Taking steps to improve attainment outcomes for pupils with a disability and/or SEND and holding relevant authorities to account when schools fail to make reasonable adjustments
- Continuing to tackle stereotypes and encourage wider subject and career choice for women, ethnic minority and disabled students
- Improving the participation and progression rates for under-represented groups in apprenticeships.
2) Improve work opportunities for everyone:
- Investing in regional economies and training in sectors and industries to offer skills and opportunities
- Developing regionally-based labour market strategies with specific actions to tackle significant gender, ethnicity and disability employment and pay.
3) Make jobs at all levels available on a flexible basis:
- Making the right to request flexible working a day-one right
- Offering all jobs including the most senior on a flexible and part-time basis.
4) Encourage men and women to share childcare responsibilities by:
- Introducing a dedicated non-transferable, ring-fenced ‘use it or lose it’ parental leave for fathers with a meaningful pay rate
- Assessing the impact of statutory childcare and different models of provision on women’s participation in the labour market and making changes to improve this.
5) Reduce prejudice and bias in recruitment, promotion and pay decisions:
- Supporting a new national target for half of all new senior level appointments in FTSE 350 organisations to be women
- Consulting with employers and relevant organisations on extending the statutory requirement to report on gender pay gaps to disability and ethnicity to encourage employers to consider the scale and causes of all their pay gaps
- Using fair, transparent processes for recruitment and development
decisions that tackle discrimination and bias.
6) Report on progress in reducing pay gaps:
- Developing national action plans to close gender, disability and ethnicity pay gaps and report regularly on progress
- Monitoring the effectiveness of mandatory gender pay gap reporting on closing pay gaps
- Publishing statistical information on the scale and trends in disability and ethnicity pay gaps
- Consulting with employers on the most effective way of extending
reporting requirements to ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
Download the full report (pdf) or access alternative versions.
