Companies are being forced to publish how much they pay men and women – so they've found ways to cover up the truth

MPs this week laid into law and accounting firms for divulging gender pay gaps that do not account for the highest-paid workers, because – the companies argue – partners are classed as owners rather than employees

Spot the one who's probably underpaid (PA)

Back in 1939, the first Twelve Step programme for overcoming dependency on booze was published in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism.

Nearly 70 years on, the programme remains an effective approach to treating all kinds of addiction and compulsion. Though sometimes phrased differently depending on the nature of the plan, the first step always revolves around admitting to having a problem. For many, that’s the hardest part.

On our herculean trek towards shutting Britain’s gender pay gap, there are many things we’re collectively doing to achieve progress. A legal requirement for all companies employing at least 250 people to report compensation levels across genders and seniority brackets by early next month certainly qualifies as such. As do campaigns and commitments to promoting more professional women into managerial positions across corporate UK.

But there’s something many organisations appear to be missing and they needn’t look further than the very beginning of any Twelve Step programme: acknowledging that there’s a fundamental problem that needs fixing and that they too, however uncomfortable that might be, are part of it.

Of course it’s difficult to deny hard facts, and I don’t believe that any credible company director or executive would attempt to challenge the Government’s official 9.1 per cent gender pay gap figure for the whole of UK. Rather than truly accepting that we need to do something about it, though, too many are still coming up with half-baked excuses for why the situation is as it is: pointing the finger to distract from their own shortcomings. And worse still, some seem to be trying to disguise the issues altogether.

MPs this week laid into law and accounting firms for divulging gender pay gaps that do not account for the highest paid workers, because – the companies argue – partners are classed as owners rather than employees.

“These firms appear to be abiding by the letter of the law, but not the spirit,” Nicky Morgan told news agency Bloomberg. “They’re taking advantage of an apparent loophole. Partners are leaders and role models in their firms. They should know better than to exclude themselves.”

In other words, they’re living by the principle that if you ignore the problem, it will probably just go away. Pretend that other organisations are worse offenders and you’ll be off the hook. One could claim that these companies are completely missing the purpose of the whole arduous process, wasting energy and time by trying to dodge what they perceive to be an inconvenient bullet.

Elsewhere, a cluster of firms has reported a gender pay gap – defined as the mean or median salary of all men across an organisation compared to that of all women across a firm – of exactly zero. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is statistically improbable to say the least, but there’s no real mechanism in place to check that figures are being disclosed accurately.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission theoretically has the ability to punish those employers who don’t comply, and it has said that it intends to do so, but how exactly that would look is unclear. Auditing 9,000 gender pay gap reports for accuracy doesn’t exactly sound like a job you can hand over to the Easter intern.

Some companies, including fashion house Hugo Boss UK, Age UK North Tyneside and Eastgate Care Group, have reportedly revised their initial zero figure, but others haven’t budged, underscoring how ineffective compulsory reporting threatens to be if companies cannot – or simply will not – admit that inequalities are a reality.

It’s time that corporate Britain wakes up to the very basic reason why gender pay gap reporting has been introduced. The stubborn chasm is burdening our economy and our productivity, not to mention placing a strain on workplace culture across many organisations.

Countless studies have demonstrated that greater diversity within the upper echelons of companies – which in turn will help shrink the pay gap – enhances performance.

Earlier this year prestigious consultancy McKinsey & Co published research based on 1,000 companies across 12 countries and showing that firms in the top quartile for gender diversity are 21 per cent more likely to enjoy above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

A workforce that feels like it’s treated fairly and represented truly certainly has its merits too.

Complying with pay gap reporting requirements should therefore not be considered a chore, some kind of favour to the nanny state or an exercise in jumping through legal hoops for the sake of getting worthless brownie points. It should be thought of an iteration of the first stage of that Twelve Step programme which ultimately paves the way to long-overdue and, crucially, universally beneficial recovery.