Private sector slow to take action on pay equality

PAY DISCRIMINATION

Private sector slow to take action on pay equality

Only one in five employers in the private sector have undertaken an equal pay review to check their pay systems for gender inequalities, compared with one in three public sector organisations, according to research published by the Equal Opportunities Commission.

The research is based on information obtained by a telephone survey of 385 organisations undertaken by pay analysts Incomes Data Services on behalf of the EOC.

Key survey findings

• 16% of all survey organisations had completed an equal pay review by November 2003, 6% were in the process of doing one and 21% had plans to do so. But the majority of employers (57%) had no plans to carry out an equal pay review.
• A fifth of organisations that had completed a pay review had found pay gaps between men and women that could not be explained on grounds other than sex.
• Most organisations that had carried out a pay review planned to repeat the exercise on a regular basis.
• The vast majority of organisations appear to be carrying out these audits in line with EOC guidance: over 90% had checked for where men and women were doing like work or work of equal value, and 75% had also examined how their job evaluation system worked to ensure that it was non-discriminatory.
• The most common reasons given by respondents for deciding to review their pay systems were a wish to be a good practice employer (64%) and that an equal pay review was seen as good business sense (51%).
• The vast majority of those employers that had no plans to carry out a review stated that they believed they already provided equal pay.

Want to know more?

Title: Monitoring Progress on Equal Pay Reviews, by Sally Brett and Sue Milsome, Incomes Data Services, published by the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Methodology: Incomes Data Services was commissioned by the EOC to carry out the study. IDS carried out a telephone survey of a random sample of 385 small, medium and large employers in November 2003. The sample was drawn from private sector, manufacturing and public sector organisations.

Availability: You can download the research in PDF format, free of charge, from the EOC web site at www.eoc.org.uk/research