a. Gender Pay Gap Reporting: Government Equality Office sets out approach to furloughed employees
Furloughed employees should be treated as being “on leave” for gender pay gap reporting purposes unless their pay is topped up.
The facts
Employees who are “on leave” and paid less than full pay are not treated as full pay relevant employees for gender pay gap reporting purposes.
“Leave” includes annual leave, maternity, paternity, adoption, parental or shared parental leave, sick leave, special leave and sabbatical leave, in each case where the employee is paid less than their full pay. “Leave” now also includes furlough leave.
This means that employees who are on furlough leave and are being paid less than their full salary are not included in the following gender pay gap calculations:
- the average (mean) gender pay gap using hourly pay;
- the median gender pay gap using hourly pay; and
- the percentage of men and women in each hourly pay quarter.
Furloughed employees will, however, be included in these calculations where their pay is being topped up by their employer. They will also be included in the calculation of the overall headcount to assess if the threshold for gender pay gap reporting is reached, and in bonus pay calculations.
What does this mean for employers
Reporting deadlines for gender pay gap information are 30 March for most public authority employers and 4 April for private, voluntary and other public authority employers. Employers should make sure that they take furloughed employees into account in their reporting, as set out above and to the extent this skews their gap explain this in any accompanying narrative.
Gov.uk: The gender pay gap data you must gather
b. Extension of Furlough scheme
The Government has announced that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will be extended until the end of April 2021 – please see our alert here
