Even though the female pound is still worth just 87.6p compared to £1 for male employees, the gender pay gap is closing and small business owners in the UK are leading the way.
According to the Government’s Gender Pay Gap Service, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are doing more to close the gender pay gap than larger companies.
The female pound is classified as the amount of money women earn compared to men, for women employed by SMEs data indicated that they are earning around 87.6p to every £1 earned by men, compared to 85.31p earned by women working at larger companies.
Since 2017, companies who employ between 250 and 499 staff have cut their gender pay gap by 2.35 per cent, while companies employing between 5,000 and 19,999 employees have closed their gender pay gap by just 0.41 per cent.
Smaller businesses are leading the way in closing the pay gap as they compete with larger employers to attract and retain the best talent.
In a bid to rival their corporate counterparts, SMEs are offering a salary and a wider range of pay and non-pay benefits that are as good as and often better than what larger firms offer.
The publication of the gender pay data is driving firms and employees to address pay disparity. For many small business owners closing the gender pay gap is a priority for them, as they are proactively focusing on how they structure their packages and subsequently pay equality is a key part of that.