Gender Pay Gap Reporting obligations

The full details of which organisations are required to report on gender pay gap data are published by the Government Equalities Office. The latest statutory guidance was updated 9 January 2024.

An abstract of the definitions of who needs to report is set out in statutory guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gender-pay-gap-reporting-guidance-for-employers/who-needs-to-report.

The opening summary is reproduced below:

“Any employer with 250 or more employees on a specific date each year (the ‘snapshot date’) must report their gender pay gap data.

If you have to report, you must report and publish your gender pay gap information within a year of your snapshot date. The snapshot date is 31 March for most public authority employers, and 5 April for everybody else.

You must do this for:

  • each year that you have 250 or more employees on your snapshot date; and
  • each separate ‘legal entity’, if you are part of an organisation or group with more than one legal entity.

If you have fewer than 250 employees on your snapshot date, you can still report if you would like to.

This guidance does not apply to Scottish or Welsh public authorities – there are different regulations for Scotland and Wales.

Your ‘headcount’ is of the number of individual employees you have, not full-time equivalents.

You must include these types of employees when calculating your headcount:

  • people with a contract of employment with you, including if they work part-time, job-share or are on leave;
  • some self-employed people, if they must perform the work themselves – that is, they are not permitted to subcontract any part of the work or employ their own staff to do it; and
  • partners on a salary, or limited liability partnership (LLP) members who you treat as employees for payroll purposes.

Include part-time workers and people job-sharing in your headcount and your gender pay gap calculations.

Each part-time worker counts as one employee when working out your headcount.

Every employee within a job-share counts as one employee. For example, if 2 people job-share, they count as 2 employees in your headcount.

If an employee has more than one job with you, you can count them either as one employee or according to how many employment contracts they have.

Choose the best approach for your organisation, but your data will be more accurate if you are consistent.”