Step 2: how to calculate your gender pay gap figures

You must calculate, report and publish the following gender pay gap figures:

• percentage of men and women in each hourly pay quarter
• mean (average) gender pay gap using hourly pay
• median gender pay gap using hourly pay
• percentage of men and women receiving bonus pay
• mean (average) gender pay gap using bonus pay
• median gender pay gap using bonus pay

Report your figures as either whole percentages or rounded to one decimal place.

Mean is the average hourly rate of pay, calculated by adding the hourly pay rate for employees then dividing by the number of employees.

Median is the middle hourly pay rate, when you arrange your pay rates in order from lowest to highest.

Acas and the Government Equalities Office (GEO) have published helpful and practical guidance on managing gender pay reporting.

Read our guidance on including furloughed employees in gender pay gap reporting.

A headcount is your number of individual employees. Employees included in the headcount are:

• people who have a contract of employment
• part-time workers (who each count as one employee)
• every employee in a job share (for example, if two people job share, they count as two employees in your headcount)
• employees on leave, such as sick leave or maternity leave
• some self-employed people (employed under a contract to personally perform the work)
• partners that are salaried or are limited liability partnership (LLP) members who are treated as employees for payroll purposes, however they must be excluded from your gender pay gap calculations
• usually, employees working oversees who can bring a claim to an employment tribunal under the Equality Act 2010 will be included

Employees that are excluded from the headcount are:

• partners in traditional partnerships and LLP members
• agency workers

You’ll need to compile two lists of employees at the snapshot date, which is the specific date when your headcount and gender pay gap figures are calculated. They are:

Relevant employees

These are all employees who are included in the headcount.  

Full-pay relevant employees

These are employees who are paid their usual full basic pay or pay for piecework (work paid according to the amount produced) during the pay period in which the snapshot date falls.

For example, if your pay period is monthly from the first of the month and your snapshot date is 5 April, the pay period in which the snapshot date falls would be 1 April to 30 April.

Full-pay relevant employees also include those who are paid less than their usual basic pay on the snapshot date for reasons other than leave (such as because of irregular working hours).

Employees who are paid less than their usual basic pay because they are on leave during the period in which the snapshot date falls must be excluded from this list.

Hourly pay is the sum of ordinary pay and any bonus pay (including any pro-rated bonus pay) that was paid in the pay period that ends on your snapshot date, excluding overtime.

You won’t always need to calculate this, for example, you will already know the hourly pay if your employees with regular working hours have a fixed hourly rate of basic pay and do not receive any bonuses, allowances, or other variable pay during the relevant pay period.

Ordinary pay includes:

• basic pay
• allowances
• pay for piecework
• pay for leave
• shift premium pay

It excludes:

• overtime pay
• allowances earned during paid overtime
• redundancy pay
• pay related to termination of employment
• pay in lieu of annual leave, repayments of expenses
• benefits in kind
• interest-free loans

You must use gross figures before deductions made at source (such as tax and employee pension contributions) and after any reductions from gross pay for salary sacrifice.

For further detail on ordinary pay, see the Government guidance.

To find the hourly pay:

1. Add together each full-pay relevant employee’s ordinary pay and any bonus pay paid in the pay period. If the bonus pay relates to a period that is longer than the defined pay period, bonus pay must be prorated. For example, if your pay period is a month but a three-monthly bonus was paid in the pay period that covers the snapshot date, work out what proportion of the bonus is relevant to the pay period. In this example, you would divide by three.
    
2. Multiply this by the appropriate ‘multiplier’ to find a weekly pay figure. This multiplier is seven divided by the number of days in the pay period (including your snapshot date).
    
3. Divide the result for each employee by the number of their weekly working hours. For employees that are not contracted to work the same number of hours each week, use an average of the hours worked over the 12-week period that ends with the last complete week of your relevant pay period.

This gives you the full-pay relevant employee’s hourly pay rate.

Where periods are calculated:

• in weeks, a year is treated as having 52.18 weeks
• in months, a month is treated as having 30.44 days
• as a year, a year is treated as having 365.25 days

You must show the percentage of male and female full-pay relevant employees in four equal-sized groups based on hourly pay.

To do this you need to:

1. Sort your full-pay relevant employees in a list according to hourly rate of pay, in order of highest to lowest paid.
    
2. Divide this into four quarters, with an equal number of employees in each section. These quarters will be the: upper hourly pay quarter, upper-middle hourly pay quarter, lower-middle hourly pay quarter and lower hourly pay quarter. If there are employees on the same hourly pay that overlap between hourly pay quarters, make sure that men and women are split as evenly as possible across the hourly pay quarters either side of the overlap.
    
3. Work out the percentage of men and women in each of the four parts.

1. Add together the hourly pay of all male full-pay relevant employees and divide this figure by the number of male full-pay relevant employees. This will give you the mean hourly pay for men.  
    
2. Repeat this process for all female full-pay relevant employees.
    
3. Take the mean hourly pay for men and subtract the mean hourly pay for women.
    
4. Divide the result by the mean hourly pay for men and multiply the result by 100. This gives you the mean gender pay gap in hourly pay as a percentage of men’s pay: this is the figure you must report.

1. List all male full-pay relevant employees in order of their hourly pay, with the lowest paid first and the highest paid last. Identify the man who is in the middle of this list. His hourly pay is your median hourly pay for men.
    
2. Repeat this process for all female full-pay relevant employees. The hourly pay of the female full-pay relevant employee in the middle of the list is your median hourly pay for women.
    
3. Take the median hourly pay for men and minus the median hourly pay for women.
    
4. Divide the result by the median hourly pay for men and multiply the result by 100. This is the median gender pay gap figure you must report

If there is an even number of men or women in your list of full-pay relevant employees, use the average (mean) of the hourly pay of the two people in the middle of the list. For example, if you have 80 full-pay relevant employees who are women, the 40th and 41st women would be the middle of this list (the median). To find the median hourly pay for women, take the mean (average) of these two women’s hourly pay.

For detail on what is included within bonus pay, see the Government guidance.

Take these steps to calculate the percentage of men and women receiving bonus pay:

1. Add together the number of male relevant employees who received bonus pay in the 12 months that ends on your snapshot date. 
    
2. Divide this by the total number of male relevant employees (whether or not they received bonus pay) and multiply the result by 100. This is your percentage of men receiving bonus pay.
    
3. Repeat this process for female relevant employees to get the percentage of women receiving bonus pay.

1. Add together the bonus payments made to all male relevant employees in the 12 months that ends on your snapshot date.
    
2. Divide this figure by the total number of male relevant employees who received bonus pay. This is your mean bonus pay for men.
    
3. Repeat this process for relevant employees who are women.
    
4. Take the mean bonus amount for men and subtract the mean bonus amount for women.
    
5. Divide this result by the mean bonus amount for men, and multiply the result by 100. This gives you the mean gender pay gap for bonuses as a percentage of men’s pay.

1. Take the list of all male relevant employees who received bonus payments in the year that ends on your snapshot date, and sort it in order of highest to lowest bonus amounts. Identify the man who is in the middle of this list. His bonus amount is the men’s median bonus pay.
    
2. Repeat this process for all female relevant employees.
    
3. Take the men’s median bonus pay figure and minus the women’s median bonus pay figure.
    
4. Divide this by the median bonus pay figure for men and multiply the result by 100. This gives you the median gender pay gap for bonus pay as a percentage of men’s pay.