What is the pay transparency scheme?

Government launches pay transparency scheme to break down barriers for women

On International Women’s Day- 8th March, two new initiatives were launched to level up the employment opportunities for women.

These new initiatives will seek to improve pay transparency in the job application process and further help businesses that want to attract women to apply to their positions.

In order to close salary gaps and tackle the pay inequality crisis, there are some factors that contribute to this. For example, listing a salary range on an application, and not including salary history provides a fairer way for women to negotiate their pay.

As part of the government’s new pilot scheme, employers must now list salary details on job adverts and stop asking about salary history during the recruitment process.

There is also significant research around STEM roles (science, technology, engineering & maths) and women returning to work after taking time out due to caring for loved ones. This has proven to be a significant challenge. Therefore, the government are launching a new returners programme to help these women get back into their STEM careers.

?The programme is going to help organisations recruit and retain these talented candidates whose CV’s are often overlooked due to having a career gap.

Organisations will now be able to provide training, development and employment support to these candidates who have taken time out for caring.

Minister for Women, Baroness Stedman-Scott, said:

“The UK can only grasp its full potential by championing its brightest and best, and ensuring everyone, regardless of their background, has the opportunity to succeed.

There is data that shows that salary is a strong factor when job seekers are looking for their next career move.

A recent Glassdoor survey shows that 67% of people believe salary is the most important aspect of a job advert.

This proves that where possible, it makes good business to share salary details at the beginning of the application process.

?By making it a requirement to provide salary history, it makes all candidates less confident when it comes to negotiating pay. This was proven by a recent study from the Fawcett society.

?58% of women say that they felt they had received a lower salary offer than they would have if the question was not asked during application.

Despite all of this, the government recognises that many employers do not have agreed pay scales and it is challenging for them to include salary information on job adverts due to ambiguous pay policies and historic pay decisions.

?The forthcoming pilot scheme means the Government can work with employers to develop a procedure that others can implement. All organisations can provide salary information during the recruitment process and remove reliance on questions about pay history.

Jemima Olchawski, Fawcett Society, Chief Executive:

“We are pleased that the government is encouraging employers to remove embedded bias from recruitment practices and supporting our call to End Salary History. Asking salary history questions keeps women on lower salaries and contributes to the UK’s gender pay gap – and can mean that past pay discrimination follows women and other groups throughout their career.

25 returner programmes have already begun across the private and public sector and the government will be learning from this initiative to design the new STEM programme.

?Unpaid care work is disproportionately performed by women, and this can have a big impact on pay and progression opportunities.

Research shows that returners with degree qualifications are paid, on average, 70% of the hourly wage of an equivalent colleague who hasn’t taken time out of work.

The government is hoping to support those who are looking to return to work in the STEM sectors, with the use of the new returners programme.

?61% of returners found the process of returning to their industry difficult or very difficult (evidence from the 2021 stem returners index survey)

Returners also commented on being overqualified for their role and entered at lower levels compared to where they were prior to their break.

In conclusion, the aim of the returners programme is to support returning candidates across the UK, by giving them the opportunity to refresh their skills in the sectors where their talents are most needed.

The scheme will run for a minimum of two years and all the evidence gathered from this will provide a good base for organisations to provide their own returner programmes.

For more information, reach out to Boxtree Recruitment. [email protected] or contact your local government agency.