Transparency seems to be the goal. The gender pay gap reporting obligations came into force on 6 April 2017. The Liberal Democrats have called for mandatory reporting on ethnicity pay gap. Now, Andy Briggs, the Government's business champion for older workers, has called for organisations to publish age data, and to sign up to a "Commit & Publish" pledge to secure at least a million more employees over the age of 50 in the workplace by 2022. This is a target increase of 12 per cent and is proposed in response to an apparent skills gap in the economy.
A number of employers have already agreed to the pledge, including Aviva, Atos, Barclays and the Cooperative Group.
Employers should start to consider the logistics of wider data collection and analysis obligations, the potential reputational and legal risks of failing to report, and any associated litigation risks of analysis exposing a wide pay gap or statistics highlighting a skewed workforce in terms of age.
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