Equal pay audit for larger organisations

This guide provides a step-by-step approach and useful templates to do an equal pay audit. It is designed to make it easy for larger businesses to examine their pay systems and decrease the risk of an equal pay claim.

What is an equal pay audit?

An equal pay audit compares the pay of men and women doing equal work in your organisation to:

• identify any differences in pay between men and women doing equal work
• investigate the causes of any (differences in pay between men and women doing equal work
• eliminate instances of unequal pay that cannot be justified

Doing an audit demonstrates your commitment as an employer to remove unfair pay practices.

Audits work best with:

• involvement and support of managers with the authority to deliver the necessary changes
• Involvement of workforce representatives to increase accuracy of the audit and the success of any further action

Once you have the involvement of managers and workforce representatives you can follow five simple steps.

1. deciding the scope
2. determining where men and women are doing equal work
3. collecting pay data
4. causes of gender pay differences
5. developing an action plan