Q. We have lots of staff on zero hours, flexible or self-employed contract arrangements. Do we need to include them in our gender pay gap (GPG) reporting?
A. For reporting purposes, the word “employee” covers:
- Employees (people with a contract of employment)
- Workers and agency workers (people with a contract to do work or provide services)
- Some self-employed people, where they have an obligation to perform their work personally
The claimants in the recent “gig economy” cases (involving Uber, Pimlico Plumbers and others) are likely to fall within either the second or third parts of that definition. So far, the case law on this issue has found people carrying out this work to be “workers”, but even if they were self-employed, as Uber and others have argued, they are still likely to fall within this wider definition of “employee”.
Agency workers will form part of the headcount of the agency that provides them, rather than being treated as part of the host “employer”.
If a person is employed by their own service company and that service company then contracts to provide a service to a customer, the worker in that situation would form part of the service company’s headcount.
Part-time workers and job-sharers all count as separate employees for gender pay reporting purposes. So, if two people share a job, they count as two people for this purpose, and not their (one person) full time equivalent.
