What is Equal Pay?

In the UK, employers must give both men and women equal treatment in their employment terms and conditions if they do:

‘like work’ – work that is the same or mostly similar
work seen as equivalent under a job evaluation exercise
work deemed to be of equal value in terms of effort, skill or decision making.

Employees are able to compare the terms within their employment contract with the same terms in a colleague’s contract, if, their colleague is an employee of the opposite sex and doing work of equal value. However, an employer is able to defend a claim if they show the reason for the difference in pay is not based on the sex of the employee.

Equal Pay is not the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is different from equal pay as it is concerned with the differences in the average pay between men and women over a period of time no matter what their role is.

Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same or similar jobs. For information on the gender pay gap and the UK regulations on calculating it, check out our page on the gender pay gap regulations.

What is an Equal Pay Audit?

An equal pay audit involves comparing the pay of men and women doing equal work in your company. It has three objectives:

to identify any differences in pay between men and women doing equal work
to investigate the causes of any differences in pay between men and women doing equal work
to eliminate unequal pay issues that cannot be justified.

An audit is not just a data collection exercise. It is a commitment to put right any unfair pay inequalities. This means that the audit must have the involvement and support of managers with the authority to deliver change.

Decide on scope

Deciding the scope of the equal pay audit and identifying the information required involves some crucial decisions, including who needs to be involved, hiring outside independent experts, what data needs to be analysed and managing expectations on potential pay gaps.

Determine equal work for men and women

Under the equal pay provisions of the Equality Act 2010, men and women in the same employment who are performing equal work should receive equal pay. This makes equal work the foundation of an equal pay audit.

Upload your organisational data

This is the easy bit. The service can handle data in a range of formats and with the data fields in any order. Your data is validated on the way in and is then anonymised and encrypted. And if you would like some help, Gapsquare can help you source, clean and validate your HR and payroll data.

Data processing by Gapsquare

This is the quick and clever bit. In only a few seconds, Gapsquare performs a detailed analysis of your data from which you can drill down to get a wide range of organisational equal pay insights.

Analyse your data to explore pay differences

This is the interesting bit. The Gapsquare dashboard gives you a detailed, visual breakdown of your organisation’s equal pay audit and using artificial intelligence suggests points to what may have caused the pay discrepancies.

Develop an action plan

If you have found unjustified differences in pay, you must put a plan in place to address this. It may not be possible to implement equal pay immediately, but your action plan should set out when and how you will rectify problematic pay issues.

Gapsquare features at glance

100% data safety, security and integrity
Guaranteed accuracy of data calculations
What-if scenarios from the interactive dashboard
Year-on-year data comparisons and trend analysis

Interactively drill-down into your organisations’ pay data
Detailed statistical data analysis
Unlimited reports for offline use

Read our FAQ

Ready to perform your Equal Pay Audit?

If you are ready to calculate your equal pay audit, please consult our helpful manual for some guidance on how to make the process quick and easy. For more information, please contact our Head Office.