Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that the measure would "cast sunlight on the discrepancies and create the pressure we need for change, driving women's wages up.”
The BHA has responded to yesterday’s announcement by calling for more details on the method of determining the gender pay gap, which would benefit the hospitality industry.
Martin Couchman, deputy chief executive at the BHA said: “According to the official statistics around 60% of the hospitality and tourism workforce are women.
“The industry is trying to take on board issues such as gender gap transparency and women in leadership positions with many sectors leading in this area.
“According to BHA’s Food and Service Management report launched in November last year, 89% of FSM members have at least one woman on their board with many far exceed the FTSE 100 goal of 25% female board members.
“The BHA we will be consulting members of the association affected by the new regulations, as part of our response to the government consultation paper which will be submitted in September.
“The new government consultation does not specify a preferred metric used to determine the gender pay gap and since our industry has a substantial number of part time workers the metric used could be important.”
In March this year, Sodexo pledged to publish a breakdown of pay variances and rectify discrepancies across its 34,000 UK & Irish employees.
In response to the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday, Sodexo voiced their support to closing the gender pay gap.
Angela Williams, HR director, Sodexo UK & Ireland: “We strongly support the Government’s decision to make it mandatory for larger companies to publish gender pay gap information.
“At Sodexo, we have already committed to publically publish the results of a gender pay gap audit next year and to resolve any unjustified discrepancies identified.
“We believe that mandatory reporting will have a significant and positive impact on achieving genuine gender equality in the workplace.”
The policy was initially introduced by the coalition and now the Prime Minister wants to close the gender pay gap within a generation.