Gender pay gap reporting – lessons learned and what comes next

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.   ­­­

Hello everyone. My name is Robert Shore, and today we’re going to be talking about gender pay gap reporting – lessons learned and what comes next. To do this, I am delighted to be joined by Michelle Gyimah, who is a pay gap strategist and founder of Equality Pays, which is a pay gap strategy consultancy. I should also say that of course Brightmine has its own pay equity analytics tool, which simplifies gender pay gap reporting, making it easy for you to meet legal requirements and uncover the root causes of disparities.

Hi Michelle. Welcome to the podcast.

Michelle Gyimah: Hi Robert. Thank you for having me today.

Robert Shore: And you’re speaking to us from Valencia, aren’t you?

Michelle Gyimah: Yes, I am.

Robert Shore: And so I want to begin by getting you to tell us a little bit about your experience, and just tell us a little bit about your day-to-day experience and what you do.

Michelle Gyimah: I’m the founder of Equality Pays, which is a pay gap strategy consultancy. And essentially what we do is we help organisations that are reporting on their pay gaps to make sense of what their data says. And we do that by helping them to create strategies and action plans that actually work for them, because a lot of organisations do go into panic mode when they look at the numbers, and there is a lot of misconception and misunderstanding, I would say, around what pay gaps are. And in our line of work we’ve seen a lot of organisations make mistakes in what they decide to focus on. So we’re here to really help organisations make sense of what their data is telling them about their organisation within their sector, so that they can take the metrics and the things that they need to focus on that’s going to really work for the organisation and have the most impact that they’re looking to make.

Robert Shore: Yeah. Because collecting data in relation to gender pay gap, for instance, this has become something that large organisations do year in, year out now, of course. But it is often, yes, what do you then do with that data and how do you create a good plan in order to make a difference? That’s often the big challenge, isn’t it?

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. And then I guess the next challenge is, ‘What does a good plan look like?’ Because, you know, we’ve seen instances of…I don’t want to say a lot of copying and pasting, but there’s a lot of looking around to see what others are doing and then deciding, ‘Oh, that sounds like a great strategy and let’s just do that.’ But because pay gap is so nuanced and there’s going to be different reasons as to why an organisation has their pay gap, you know, that approach doesn’t work. And it really boils down to having a good understanding of what your data is genuinely telling you about what’s happening within the organisation.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I think as we’re discussing today, it would be great if we can sort of dig into a couple of really detailed or, you know, particular cases there to just sort of bring that out. But anyway, we’re going to begin with the Employment Rights Act 2025, which is obviously a gamechanger for organisations in a variety of ways. There are some things in there that obviously bear on pay gap reporting. Obviously there’s to do with creating action plans. How are you thinking about that and what are you telling organisations when they ask you about what the ERA is going to do?

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. So I think probably for quite a lot of organisations this might feel like it’s kind of come out of the blue, like the changes that are coming to gender pay gap reporting. But the reality is that there was always going to be some kind of review after the legislation had come into force after a number of years. And so for those of us that are in this space, this isn’t surprising to see changes coming forward.

So I guess in terms of gender pay gap reporting there are kind of two areas that employers do need to be mindful of. And so one of them that you mentioned was around having equality action plans because a lot of organisations that have had to report on their gender pay gap data have done that but they haven’t also had an action plan in place, or at the very least have published an action plan. I think when I was looking up some statistics around, you know, what the percentage looks like, a UK Government survey found that around 30% of organisations either published or intended to publish their gender action plans but only 16% planned to publish externally.

And so this new requirement is really another nudge for employers that it’s not enough to just report on the data, because that in of itself is not the work, but it’s what happens next. And so I guess it’s a way of bringing much more accountability to organisations that they make a public statement around what it is that they’re going to do that brings much more scrutiny, I guess, and hopefully will influence organisations to actually do the things that they say that they’re going to do within their action plans.

So that’s the first kind of change that’s coming forward.

Robert Shore: Michelle there, just to cut in for a second. With the…possibility you should just give the timeline for this. At the moment I think the Government is saying it’s going to be introduced in 2027, although there is no precise date. But I mean, are we presuming March, April next year?

Michelle Gyimah: I would say that that’s looking likely. Like you said, there’s nothing set in stone but the general consensus is that it’s likely to be 2027. Having said that, that doesn’t mean you have to wait until 2027 to start putting your action plans out there if you haven’t already. But yes, that’s looking like the date it’s going to be compulsory.

Robert Shore: Okay. And yes, the second then.

Michelle Gyimah: Yep. So the second aspect is around the inclusion of having menopause plans, so whether that is something that you have separately or it could be part of your equality action plan. And again, you know, when I’ve spoken to organisations this has come as a bit of a surprise because I think a lot of organisations don’t see the links between gender equality and issues around the gender pay gap and the menopause.

So over the last few years we have seen an explosion in terms of the focus and attention and conversations that are being had publicly about the issues that women face when they are going through the menopause, but particularly around this being something that needs to be talked about within the workplace. Because prior to these conversations they were always something that was very private, something that was taboo, seen as a health issue but a very individual, private health issue. But the reframing of the conversation has now become that yes, this is a health issue, but it’s also a workplace issue too because there is a knock-on effect that employers need to be aware of.

So we know that the data tells us that women aged between 55 to 64, they make up 62.3% of the labour market, and is actually one of the fastest growing segments of the UK workforce. And so if we think about that high percentage of people within the workforce that are going to go through this change in their lives, there is naturally going to be a cost to employers when we think about the health indications and what happens. And that cost at the moment is estimated at 14 million working days lost, and that translates to £1.8 billion annually lost in GDP because of, you know, having to navigate the physical and health changes that menopause brings – absences, sickness etc.

 So there is a link between what the gender pay gap tells us about what’s happening within the UK workforce and what’s happening to women as they’re going through this life change.

And so what the Government has done has basically put the two together and said to employers, ‘This is now on your radar, and there are things that you can do to support your staff who are going through this. And doing that will also help you with your gender pay gap, so here is what we expect you to do.’ So it’s around looking at creating menopause plans so that employers are mindful of how they can be supportive of people who are going through this within their workforce.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I mean actually, since you say employers ask you about this, what explicitly is the impact of the menopause on pay gap? Just talk us through that.

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. So the thing that springs to mind is the fact that, you know, as women age and progress in the workplace, you know, they’re able to usually move into roles that have more responsibility, higher pay etc. But quite often – and obviously this depends on the individual and what’s going on with them – that might clash with the time that they’re approaching menopause. So then they’re having to take, you know, time out of the workplace to kind of navigate the symptoms and, you know, address the issues that they might face.

And what we tend to see is women will either reduce their working hours or maybe leave the workplace altogether because it’s just not feasible for them to navigate these health issues and navigate work as well.

And there’s also an issue around employers just not understanding what these women are going through. And you know, there’s potential for bias in terms of how they’re treated, performance reviews etc., whether they’re still considered for promotion, whether they’re still considered to be able to handle the responsibility that they have, you know, at that time of life. And all of these things are impacting the gender pay gap. But I think what has happened is that they’ve never been linked before, and so having this link means that employers do need to step back and have a look at, well what are their policies and what are their behaviours, and maybe how is how they’re approaching, you know, women that are going through the menopause, how is that impacting, you know, what their pay gap figures are telling them about their organisation?

Robert Shore: Yeah. And so when employers are approaching you about this, what sort of issues are you…I mean, when you’re looking at action plans with them, what sort of thing are you able to suggest that they’re possibly not seeing immediately?

Michelle Gyimah: The biggest thing that I see with organisations that either have action plans that are not working or they don’t have action plans at all, is not really understanding that so often a lot of the issues as to why they have the gender pay gap that they have is to do with career progression, or I should say the lack of career progression in terms of how it looks if women were to compare themselves to, say, men within the organisation or, if you were looking at ethnicity, how people from ethnic minority background would compare themselves to, you know, their white counterparts.

You know, we’re still in this space where there’s still this myth that the pay gap is simply just about pay. But the reality is that your pay is determined by what your career progression looks like. And so if there are career progression issues where there isn’t equitable access to training or there is bias in deciding who gets promotions etc., then that’s naturally going to have an impact on what your pay gap looks like.

So the whole career progression piece and whether it’s equitable is, I would say, the biggest area in which I have to work with organisations to help them understand how they’ve got to the position that they’re in, and help them to understand just how much of the pay gap, you know, they can actually take responsibility for.

Robert Shore: When an organisation comes to you, you extract certain data. Or the data is collected. And it’s how good you are then at an organisation is at looking at that data, isn’t it, and making sense of it? And again, what sort of thing do you find yourself generally talking to organisations about that they don’t automatically recognise for themselves?

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. It’s a good question, and I guess another way to look at that is to help them identify, you know, what are the kind of common mistakes that they’re making in their approach to addressing the pay gap.

So the first one being…is this issue of around just publishing the data. You know, I’m still kind of surprised at the numbers of organisations that feel that publishing the data is enough, or even publishing an action plan is enough. Because the reality is that it isn’t. You know, this has to be looked at as any other piece of work that you would do in an organisation. It has to have intention, it has to have backing, there has to be, you know, accountability. So I guess that’s the kind of first area that organisations need to be really thinking about.

And the second is that this isn’t just a HR problem to solve. And yes, the first point of contact for me is often the HR manager, HR director. But one of the problems that I see is that the rest of the organisation think that, ‘Oh, pay gaps. Okay, this is just a HR problem. So they can be, you know, on the other side of the organisation sorting that out by themselves.’ And the reality is that that’s just not possible. Pay gaps are something very, very nuanced. It’s the result of, you know, a thousand decisions that are made every day, every week, every month, every year within an organisation. And there are multiple touchpoints where pay gaps arise because of all of those decisions that multiple people, teams and departments make day in, day out.

So organisations do need to broaden their horizons and to really understand that, you know, pay gaps arise within the ecosystem of an organisation, which means it can’t be the responsibility of just one person or just the HR team.

Robert Shore: So I think one thing we’re sort of pointing to here is that this extension of action plan publication under the ERA makes sense in terms of what we’ve seen from how pay gap reporting has worked up to this point, in that it’s sort of a natural extension or a natural underlining of what’s necessary to make progress in this area. Does that seem right to you? ‘Cause I mean, have you seen much progress across this past period? ‘Cause I think you’ve been involved with pay gap reporting from the beginning, haven’t you?

Michelle Gyimah: Yes. But I guess in some ways it depends on what you define as progress. So some people would define progress as, you know, seeing pay gap percentages drop, whether that’s within an organisation or a sector or nationally. And if you were to take that as a sign of progress then yes, but it’s been slow.

The other way you could think of this is the concept of bringing this to national attention, this being a topic that is no longer taboo and that people can talk about, that individuals have access to this information and can make much more informed decisions. You know, we know that, for example, you know, Gen Z that’s coming into the workplace, anything to do with fairness particularly around fair pay and lack of bias and discrimination, these things are hyper-important to them and they are more than happy to have conversations about this with current employers and potential employers.

 So if you were to think outside of the box in terms of not just looking at the dataset but looking at this much more holistically, then yes, you could say that there has been progress because the conversation has moved on from something that was very taboo to something that, you know, we can openly talk about on a podcast and nobody’s going to bat an eyelid and think that it’s strange.

Robert Shore: ‘Cause I think actually – is this right? – that the pay gap narrowed in the period prior to the introduction of the actual legislation in 2017/18 in a way that it sort of…narrowed a bit since as well, but that actually it’s about a generational shift as much as it is, or has been, about a generational shift as much as it’s been about a legislative enforcement up to this point in some ways, that actually there is something that is just happening naturally as part of, you know, the times that we live in and how people have changed their mindset.

Michelle Gyimah: Exactly. And I think also the other thing that we need to remember is that legislation often comes, you know, after some societal shift has happened. So I guess, you know, like you say, this is something that probably would have been naturally evolving but legislation is now just kind of pushing it that bit further by getting employers to understand that this something that you have to comply with because this is the shift that we are seeing in society.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And we’re not going to talk about this today, but the EU Pay Transparency Directive – and of course you’re in Valencia and I know you are involved with this as well – is something that reflects that shift, isn’t it? And this is going to apply in all EU member states and will have some knock-on implications for UK employers, whatever their relationship with EU workforces might be.

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. That’s a really good example of that relationship between legislation and societal change. I mean, the reality is, you know, we won’t talk about it in great detail here, but the reality is that pay transparency is actually already here. But what this legislation is doing, it’s finessing and focusing the attention of employers so that they know what it is that they need to do in order to meet the expectations that people today have when it comes to looking for jobs and staying in jobs and how pay decisions are made. But yeah, that’s a great example of, you know, legislation and societal change, and how they kind of…it’s like a symbiotic relationship, as it were.

Robert Shore: Yes. What’s the most common mistake you still see after all these years of pay gap reporting?

Michelle Gyimah: I would say that there were two. So the first one is that we are still in the space of feeling that whatever solutions we come up with to address pay gap problems, it’s all about fixing people rather than addressing systems. And sometimes this is intentional and sometimes it isn’t. So I’ll explain what I mean.

So an organisation will look at their data and they will identify that, ‘Okay, a big part of the reason as to why we have the pay gap we have is that we don’t have very many women within senior leadership roles.’ And so they’ll start to think, ‘Okay, so what can we do about that? How can we prepare women for these roles as and when they come up?’ And an organisation will say, ‘Okay, we need to send them on some leadership training.’ And then what tends to happen is they’ll send them on leadership training. They may even find some leadership training that’s specifically geared towards women and they’ll think, ‘Great, this is even better.’ But then the expectation is, is that those people will go to that training, they will learn how to fit into the system, they will learn what the expectations of them are, what skills are required. And then when a role comes up they will just nicely slot into that role.’

Now, on the face of it you might think, ‘Well yes, that makes sense. That’s how, you know, training and upskilling works.’ But there isn’t any focus on taking a step back and asking the organisation, taking a step back and asking themselves, ‘Is there any bias baked into our systems? You know, what are the real reasons? Or what are other reasons? So yes, we can train up people but is there something wrong with the system that we have?’

So an example might be, ‘Is there actually bias in our promotion system?’ So it may not be that, you know, these women don’t have the skill to be leaders, but it might be that our promotion system is really opaque. Or you know, there’s no fairness, there’s no objectivity or there’s bias baked into it.

So we do need to move away from this idea that we have to focus on fixing people, or just training them in how to progress within the organisation, and to really focus on, ‘Okay, well what do our systems look like? And are there areas where we’re allowing bias to make the decisions and is that the thing that’s impacting the gender pay gap?’

Robert Shore: That’s really interesting. Let’s move, though, to the second common mistake.

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. So the second issue is around looking for quick solutions, I would say. So looking for solutions that include, for example, running and event or running a one-off training session. And I see this a lot. Organisations will say, ‘Okay, well we’re going to start running International Women’s Day events.’ Or, ‘We’re going to have a training session on, I don’t know, negotiation or confidence.’ You know, those types of things. In and of themselves that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with them. But when they are the standalone solution to your pay gap problem then it becomes problematic because what that looks like, it looks like you’re looking for a quick fix, something that looks good sounds good on paper. But the reality is that it doesn’t have an impact on what’s happening within your organisation. It doesn’t have an impact on actually shifting the dial or the needle.

And to a certain extent I understand why organisations do want to have something done quickly. You know, we live in a world of wanting instant change. But we do have to be mindful that pay gaps is a deeply entrenched problem which requires multiple solutions over a longer period of time. So chasing those one-off sessions or those events that look good is just not going to have the impact that organisations are looking for.

Robert Shore: When you talk to an organisation who says, ‘Well look, we’ve done this day, this special training session,’ or whatever, how do you get them to think about, you know, making that a more permanent or embedded kind of attitude shift?

Michelle Gyimah: Well the first question I always ask them is, ‘What happened next?’ You know, ‘What was the impact?’ Again, it feels like the focus is on doing that one thing and then be able to say that that was the work when it isn’t. So getting people to evaluate, ‘Okay, so what impact did it have?’

And also helping them to understand, you know, ‘Who else was involved in this?’ And again, it’s often just down to the HR team. So then, you know, my role is to kind of pull together how the pay gap works within the organisation and who the key influencers are and who the key players are, and then ask…and get them to evaluate, ‘So when you’ve done these sessions, these one-off trainings, events etc., how has that been…how has that impacted the other key players within the organisation?’ And often the answer is that it hasn’t made the difference. So it’s about helping them to see that for themselves to then focus on, ‘Okay, so what will make the difference? You know, where are the other touchpoints that you’re not focusing on? Where are the metrics that you’re not looking at? Who are the people who are not really brought into this conversation that do need to be brought into that conversation?’ So it’s all about getting them to kind of self-evaluate by asking the right kind of pertinent questions.

 I talk about the most common pay gap mistakes that I see organisations make quite a lot in my podcast. So if you go to Episode 18, and that’s about the most common pay gap mistakes, I talk about what they are, and also provide some solutions as to what organisations should do instead. So if you go and listen, you might recognise some things that you’ve done yourself, but there’s also some advice around what you can do to change that so that you don’t keep making the same mistakes.

Robert Shore: We are also expecting the introduction of ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. I think there was an idea that it might have been in the Employment Rights Act or in the bill in the first place but it wasn’t. The Government has said it’s going to go forward with this. The timing remains unclear, however. What are the mistakes that we’ve learned from gender pay gap reporting and how can they be applied in this new area?

Michelle Gyimah: The key mistake, I guess, that we hopefully have learned from gender pay gap reporting is that we have to be honest about what the data tells you about the organisation. And I think this is going to be even more important for ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting, mainly because collecting the data is going to be much more of a challenge. And so even for organisations who tell me, ‘We don’t have enough data so therefore we can’t do anything about our pay gaps because we don’t have enough data,’ not having that data or having those data gaps, that in and of itself tells an honest story about your pay gap as well, especially because in this instance you’re asking people to volunteer that information. And if people are not willing to do that, there’s your current story. You know, it doesn’t mean that you can sit back and say, ‘Well, we only got a low return rate so we can’t possibly do anything with these numbers.’ You can do something with those numbers because the low return rate in and of itself is a story that you need to be exploring and delving into, ‘Why is that the case? What’s happening within the organisation that means X amount of people, or X percentage of people, don’t want to share their data with us?’

Robert Shore: Yeah. So what are the common reasons for that?

Michelle Gyimah: The biggest reason is around a lack of trust. And I guess a lack of understanding as well. So trust being the biggest one. And often that has come from a place of maybe things that have happened in the past within the organisation. So whether there’s been conflicts or problems and, you know, individuals will feel naturally nervous about being asked about this data, and they’ll feel nervous about who gets sight of it, how can it be used, you know, what the purpose of collecting the data is. And so that, for me, is the thing that comes up time and time again on, you know, that real anxiety and uncertainty, and that real fear that if they were to provide this data it would somehow be used to their detriment, and that it would actually be much safer, you know, there’d be a lot less anxiety and stress on the part of the employee, if they simply didn’t give this data. Because they don’t have to.

So that, for me, is the challenge that I see that employees have in providing this information to their employers.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I mean, let’s take a sort of example. There, say, we were talking about disability data, for instance, and low returns on that. Why might there be a sort of lack of trust in sort of being as open as possible about that or wanting to give data at all? What are sort of the common issues there?

Michelle Gyimah: There’s several. One I would say is the fear of being judged, and especially if, you know, somebody does have a disability but they don’t define themselves or view themselves as somebody who does, maybe because they have, you know, kind of have coping mechanisms, ways of navigating those issues, and they just don’t see themselves as somebody who has a disability. Because unfortunately there is still a lot of negative connotations that come with it. So I think there is a huge thing around, you know, personal perception.

And then the other point is the fear of being judged and the fear of bias that might come with identifying the fact that, yes, you do have a disability and that you do need reasonable adjustments. You know, I know that I’ve spoken to individuals who will talk about how hard they’ve had to fight to get reasonable adjustments or how difficult it is to have a conversation with a manager around what it is that they need to be able to do their job effectively, and the feeling of being discriminated against and of being judged. And sometimes it’s very overt and sometimes it’s very covert.

So I think those two things are, I would say, the kind of biggest obstacles as to why people may not provide their data, as well as, you know, concerns about how the data’s being used and who’s going to use the data as well.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So presumably organisations have to be much clearer about how that is going to be used and who will have access to that data. You talked about building trust. What are the ways to build trust that you would recommend normally?

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah. That’s a really big question and I guess it all depends on, you know, what the culture of the organisation is. And it also depends on the historical content. You know, so for example if you’re an organisation that you see a high percentage of, you know, grievances and disciplinaries, and if you look at your data and you see it’s disproportionately from people from ethnic minority backgrounds or people who have declared that they have a disability. And not having trust in the organisation, particularly if it’s an organisation where there’s been lots of grievances and disciplinaries, and when they’ve looked at the data you can see it’s disproportionately from people from ethnic minority backgrounds or people that have disabilities. You know, those organisations will have a lot of work to do to rebuild and regain that trust.

So what that looks like is going to be different for each organisation based on the historical context and the narrative, the relationships that they have had with their employees in the past.

But I would say on a wider note that this is going to be a challenging area for a lot of employers, and they need to be thinking about laying that groundwork and doing that work to build trust over time to try and improve the return rates if they want to seriously have data that looks robust so that they can make, you know, good decisions based on robust data.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And obviously it can’t just be a HR problem, can it? Obviously you need leadership, senior leadership buy-in for all of this as well.

Michelle Gyimah: Yeah, 100%. I mean, given that 20-24% of working-age adults have a disability, and actually the likelihood is that that number’s probably much higher because we’ve got limited data, and the fact that as we age you’re more likely to develop disabilities as well, you know, we’re talking about a huge number of people. And I think it’s unfair and unrealistic again to expect one team to be responsible for, you know, fixing all of the problems that come with that.

But I guess the question that organisations need to be asking themselves is, you know, ‘What’s in our policies, in our attitudes, and what are the physical barriers that we are putting in place that’s making progression difficult for anybody who has or declares that they have a disability?’ And if you were to look at the question like that, then it naturally is much, much more broader than just the HR team kind of sat in the corner, you know, of an organisation.

Robert Shore: Absolutely. Right, so we’re going to end with some tips, I think, Michelle, on preparing for the changes that we have upcoming at the moment. We’ve been discussing gender pay gap and menopause action plans and obviously ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting as well. So what tips do you have?

Michelle Gyimah: Well, for me the first tip is to know and understand what your current positioning is. I know there are a lot of organisations that do have data but have not published, you know, particularly around ethnicity and disability because the numbers don’t look great and they’re quite fearful. And you know, I understand that to a certain extent. But you do have to have a good understanding of what your numbers are telling you, even if – and especially if, I should say – you’ve got low return rates. Because like I said before, that still is telling in and of itself, and it gives you a platform to start from. It gives you a foundation to start work from.

The second thing I would say is around, you know, prepare for increased accountability. The scope of reporting is changing to include two new protected characteristics, but even with gender pay gap reporting what is expected of you has widened. You know, there’s that big nudge for you to do more. And so as you produce more data, more information, that scrutiny is going to be there so you need to up-level what the accountability look like, so who’s responsible for what, for when etc.

And then the last thing is not to be looking for quick fixes. I completely understand why it’s comfortable to do that, why it’s comfortable to look for things that will make you look good and make the optics great. But the point of reporting is to make an impact, and that takes time. So you’re not going to see immediate results. You’re not even going to see great positive results really quickly. But the thing that’s important is that the actions that you’re taking is about making sustainable change, making that sustainable impact.

And so if you can do those three things and have that mindset and attitude of those three things, that will help you to make better decisions, it will help you to not make rushed decisions, and it will also help you to grow as an organisation in terms of what you’re doing and how you’re communicating, both internally and externally on the actions that you are taking.

Robert Shore: I think that’s a great tip on which to end. Michelle, thank you very much for joining us today.

We have, of course, lots of supporting materials on the Brightmine website, of course a pay equity analytics tool to help you with gender pay gap reporting.

Beyond that I just have to say, until next time.