New features and upgrades have been launched by the human resources software solutions provider K3 Syspro with their HR solution, Equator to help companies comply with the latest legislation to ensure inequality in pay between men and women is reported.
From April 6 2017, all companies with more than 250 employees will have to collect information on a wide range of data from shift patterns through to bonuses. They will also have to publish their annual reports on the gender pay gap.
The new legislation has been introduced by the Government Equalities Office with guidance for compliance provided by the Conciliation Service ACAS.
The data will be used to help businesses understand any pay gaps between genders. The discrepancies are described by the Government as complex and overlapping. They include career choices by women compared with men and more part-time work carried out by women.
The recent survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that although the gender pay gap is decreasing, women are still being paid less than their male counterparts.
Equator already helps HR teams keep track of payroll, staff holidays and entitlements among other things. It has now included these Government gender pay gap updates in its package using existing core information.
Kevin O’Donnell, Head of HR Development, Equator said:
“We have to make sure from a software development point of view that we can provide solutions in line with the new legislation so businesses can use Equator for this. The software does, of course, provide the tools to track information on the gender divide, producing the basic statistics for pay and bonuses required by the legislation, but also goes much deeper than that.
“It allows breakdown by categories including seniority, length of service and actual role. It then looks at the type of occupation, age group and working patterns so you may understand better where you have inequality in pay within your organisation.”
The upgrades to Equator software will help businesses have a better understanding of the differences between the average earnings of men and women. The solution is an invaluable tool to assess the levels of equality within the workplace and how to effectively maximise talent.
Kevin said:
“We have to empower our customers so they can collect this data to abide by the legislation therefore we have enabled K3 Equator to cater for all the nuances. This means a breakdown too of weekly and monthly paid staff and any discrepancies in earnings between part-time and full-time workers. It will average out the pay and bonus for each employee and produce mean, median and quartile statistics in a single query to satisfy the legislative requirements.”
The latest update of Equator which includes these legislative changes amongst others has already been released to customers ready for 6th April.
Rebecca joined the HRreview editorial team in January 2016. After graduating from the University of Sheffield Hallam in 2013 with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca has spent five years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past she has been part of the editorial teams at Sleeper and Dezeen and has founded her own arts collective.
