Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Mind the gap

There is a gender pay gap at the BBC - 9.3% in favour of men, 9.6% if you include staff working in Northern Ireland. But the experts hired by the BBC for the audit published today say there is no systemic discrimination against women in terms of pay.

So why the gap ?

"It appears to be more than chance that in the cases where the median is in favour of either gender, the average length of service in role is longer for men, and vice versa. Examples of the reasons identified for the pay differentials were market forces, specialist skills, TUPE transfer protection, attachment pay increases, experience and differing levels of responsibility. Such examples equally applied to our analysis of outliers, where in many cases the levels of knowledge and responsibility of the individuals being compared were very different from others in their grade."

Well, you can't argue about length of service, but many of the other reasons offered can be based on subjective judgements of skills, knowledge, market forces etc. No wonder these experts want better documentation of the rationale for individual pay decisions. Here's the thoughts of Sir Patrick Elias.

"The audit has highlighted a number of areas where procedures need to be improved, in relation, for example, to the more consistent application of principles for making pay decisions across the BBC and in record keeping relating to contracts and pay decisions. This is not an issue of discrimination but one of fairness. These failings apply across the board, affecting both men and women alike. A lack of consistency or transparency in the application of the principles for determining pay understandably breeds suspicion about the process and generates a sense of unfairness which in some cases may be justified. It is important that procedures are tightened up. I am aware that a review of these issues is underway as part of the BBC’s wider review of pay and terms and conditions."

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