Emily-Jayne Hinds, Senior Adviser at Acas, which looks to promote best practice and to act in cases of dispute resolution, tackles how employers can remain compliant with two of the most topical issues of the moment.
The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are now enforce and are perhaps one of the most complicated pieces of legislation to come into force in recent years. One of the key points for employers is that they are responsible for compliance.
“There’s so much information [on GDPR],” says Hinds. However, employers shouldn’t be concerned that the legislation is just designed to catch them out.“The ICO (Information Commission’s Office) has made it clear that it’s about supporting employers to ensure best practice,” says Hinds.
As such, employers need to ensure that they have taken a common sense approach and have put the necessary steps in place to protect employees’ data.
Another key issue is gender pay gap reporting. Figures from this year’s reports show a 78 per cent gap in favour of men. However, Hinds notes that further work may be needed to understand whether the calculations have been done correctly.
Going forward, what’s most important is implementing change to improve the gap. “Everything is how it is,” says Hinds. “But it’s about how you can look forward to the future to change that.
“It’s really a lot around the culture of the organisation and industries to look at what we can do to change that.”
There are lots of small things that employers can do to begin to improve things from looking at recruitment processes and return to work programmes, to more drastic actions such as giving pay rises to narrow the gap.
However, Hinds added that whatever action an employer takes, there is a “need to continually review actions to ensure they continue to be effective in reducing the pay gap.”
