Equal pay reviews: products and services

Section 7 of the Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide on equal pay reviews. Other sections.


Use this section to

Find out what practical help is available for checking and auditing your pay systems

Decide how these tools and services can fit into your overall equal pay strategy

Contact providers for further information on their services

There is a growing amount of external help for employers wanting to manage equal pay and check their pay systems. Below is a round-up of the guides, services and tools available. This section is not intended as an evaluation or review of the products on offer; we merely aim to provide information from which employers can narrow down their search for the service that works for them.

The Equal Pay Review Kit

From: the EOC

Approach: best practice

Format: paper

Website: www.eoc.org.uk

Telephone: 0845 6015901

  • A step-by-step guide to carrying out a pay review, with accompanying guidance notes. This kit gives advice on how to apply the EOC's five-step Equal Pay Review Model (see Carrying out an equal pay review), and general information on good equal pay practice. The guidance notes contain supplementary information on matters such as carrying out statistical analysis and analytical job evaluation schemes.

    Equal Pay, Fair Pay

    A Small Business Guide to Effective Pay Practices

    From: the EOC (as above)

    Approach: best practice

    Format: paper, CD-Rom

  • A simplified guide based on the five-step model mentioned above, aimed at businesses without specialist personnel expertise. Provides, for example, sample spreadsheets for collecting and comparing pay information.

    Equal Pay Guide

    From: Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD)

    Approach: best practice

    Format: paper

    Website: www.cipd.co.uk

    Telephone: 020 8971 9000

  • This executive briefing takes the practitioner through the business arguments for equal pay and the legal background, and explains pay audits and non-discriminatory job evaluation. It also provides advice on identifying potential equal pay problem areas and how to resolve equal pay problems.

    Close the Gap

    Equal Pay Reps Training

    From: TUC

    Approach: best practice

    Format: online, face-to-face

    Website: www.tuc.org.uk/learning - you can download pdf version of leaflet and application form

    Telephone: Jackie Williams, 020 7467 1253

  • Training course introduced last year - partly with government funding - to train union equal pay representatives, with the emphasis on a partnership approach to eliminating pay discrimination. Courses can be run face-to-face over three days or flexibly over a 10-week period via distance learning.

    The course consists of: understanding how the pay gap occurs; knowing what the law says on equal pay; understanding what pay reviews are and why they are necessary; and gaining the skills to work in partnership with employers to carry out pay reviews.

    The course has been attended by HR and managers from companies including BMW UK and Alliance and Leicester as the first step in a best practice approach to tackling equal pay.

    Equal Pay Risk Assessment Questionnaire

    From: Hay Group/Eversheds

    Approach: risk-based

    Format: paper, online

    Websites: www.haygroup.com, www.eversheds.com

    Telephone: Jane Phillipson, Hay Group on 0161 835 2540, Nigel Youngman, Eversheds, on 01223 443666

  • Based on their experience, Hay and Eversheds have identified 10 key equal pay risk indicators, which they have built into the questionnaire. They include whether employers have an analytical job evaluation scheme, a formal grading scheme, a standard format for job descriptions, etc. The more No answers are given, the greater the risk of an equal pay claim. The questionnaire is designed to be used by employers not as a solution in itself, but as an indicator of whether further practical work is needed - it provides little more than a way into the group's range of services, including equal pay audits and job evaluation.

    Job Evaluation: An Introduction

    From: Acas

    Approach: best practice

    Format: paper, online

    Website: www.acas.org.uk

    Telephone: 08702 42 90 90

  • Booklet designed to give impartial, user-friendly advice, and to help employers take a systematic and consistent approach to defining the relative worth of jobs within their organisations. The guide covers all aspects of best practice on job evaluation, and has useful appendices, including a glossary and notes for further reading.

    Equal pay healthcheck

    From: DLA MGC Consulting

    Format: paper

    Approach: risk-based

    Website: www.dla.com

    Telephone: Derek Burn, 0151 237 4720

  • This is not a full equal pay review, but is designed to identify likely areas of vulnerability to equal pay claims. The outcome of the healthcheck is the identification of levels of risk - low, medium, or high - and suggestions as to the need for, and urgency of, action. While DLA MCG might advise a more detailed equal pay review or pay audit on the basis of its findings, it says most organisations should be able to progress to remedial action on the basis of the healthcheck report alone.

    The questionnaire has four modules: base data, grading systems, job evaluation systems and progression arrangements, and DLA MGC says it could take as little as an hour or two to fill in. This might be ambitious, with questions such as:

    "Can you give a brief history of the development of your job evaluation scheme (if applicable). In particular, the gender mix of the design team and evaluation panel; the factors used; the weighting of the factors; frequency of evaluations (currently); the communications with staff about the way in which the system operates; the appeals process. Dates of installation and any update would be useful."

    Equal pay audit tool

    From: Towers Perrin

    Approach: risk-based

    Format: consultancy

    Website: www.towersperrin.com

    Telephone: Martin McGuigan, 020 7170 2193, Richard Powell, 020 7170 2814

  • This audit tool is not for employers themselves, but is used by consultants to produce a report for clients, including, if required, prioritised recommendations for action. The audit is tailored to fit the client's business structure and pay schemes, using its 'core methodology' to assess potential risk areas.

    The consultants use a five-stage model to scope and cost the audit; carry out data analysis and sampling to identify problem areas; examine actual pay practice, seeking evidence and explanation for the second- and third-stage findings; and finally, identify issues and priorities for action. The output is a short or long version report - the first identifying the key equal pay issues to be addressed, and the second giving specific recommendations for action.

    Equal Value Audit Programme

    From: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

    Approach: risk-based

    Format: consultancy

    Telephone: Martha How or Marie Tewkesbury, 020 7804 8132

  • PwC offers no self-help services or tools for employers either, but has a fairly new consultancy service for public and increasingly private sector clients, carried out in conjunction with law firm Landwell.

    Its experts will analyse the history of any equal pay claims, complete a trawl of pay data using job descriptions or job titles as a starting point, and examine pay systems, organisational structure and any job evaluation schemes. Workshops are then held with HR people and often the financial director to share raw data and identify a dozen or so points for further investigation. Usual output is a detailed analysis of specific risks and an action plan.

    E-Review

    From: e-reward.co.uk

    Approach: data analysis, some best practice

    Format: software

    Website: www.e-reward.co.uk

    Telephone, 020 7607 2686

  • An off-the-shelf software toolkit for producing data reports, E-Review is designed to help employers identify pay gaps by gender, race or disability, and focus their efforts in investigating the causes of these.

    Using Microsoft's Access database programme, e-reward provides a starter kit with documentation to conduct the initial statistical data analyses required for an equal pay review process. There are also 38 pages of written guidelines on how to conduct an equal pay review.

    The idea is that the employer extracts the relevant data from its HR and/or payroll systems, and the toolkit helps combine and manipulate it to generate reports.

    After importing the relevant data, employers can either generate their own reports, if they have the in-house Access skills, or send the data to e-reward's bureau service, where the reports can be generated for an extra £400 plus VAT. For an additional fee of £100 per hour plus VAT, e-reward will also create other reports to order or extend the standard ones to meet specific needs.

    The guidelines, which "take full account of the latest guidance from the EOC", then help break the review process down into three key steps: analysis, diagnosis, and action.

    Equal Pay Reviewer

    From: TMS Equality and Diversity Consultants and Link HR Systems

    Approach: data analysis

    Format: software

    Websites: www.link-hrsystems.co.uk, www.tms.uk.com

    Telephone: Link - 01244 399555,

    TMS - 020 7251 3403

  • From the consultants responsible for developing the EOC Equal Pay Review model comes new software to assist in the collation of equal pay data. The software has tools for importing the data from the relevant HR systems, and a set of standard reporting tools for analysing the data, specifically designed to follow the EOC guidelines.

    The software helps you to organise the data by requiring you to group jobs into sets according to your existing job evaluation scheme or other equal value checks. In the absence of any job evaluation, TMS offers a "job-sizing system designed with equal value sensitivities in mind".

    The software can be used in-house or with the help of consultants to develop an Equal Pay Action Plan, with the offer of other Link software to help in redesigning pay arrangements if necessary.


    One stop guide to equal pay reviews: other sections

    Section 1: The time is nigh for equal pay
    Section 2: The legal framework
    Section 3: The business case
    Section 4: Carrying out an equal pay review
    Section 5: Designing and implementing a non-discriminatory job evaluation scheme
    Section 6: Pay practices - some questions and answers
    Section 7: Products and services
    Section 8: Case studies
    Section 9: Research
    Section 10: Key contacts
    Section 11: Jargon buster
    Section 12: Checklists