The UK government has published new guidance, “How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers”, to provide employers with evidence-based measures to improve recruitment, retention and progression outcomes for women.
The guidance was produced by the Behavioural Insights Team and the Office for Equality and Opportunity. It sits within a wider toolkit that includes step-by-step resources on setting targets, running structured interviews, establishing diversity leads and making pay processes transparent.
For employers, it provides a practical roadmap to support legal compliance under the Equality Act 2010, mitigate discrimination and harassment risks and strengthen diversity outcomes across the workforce, as part of their wider statutory duties, including the Equality Act, the gender pay gap reporting regime for organisations with 250 or more employees, the day-one right to request flexible working, and the new duty to take reasonable steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment.
What the guidance recommends
The paper groups recommended actions into four areas: hiring and selection, talent management and development, inclusion and retention, and leadership and accountability. The guidance distinguishes between actions with strong evidence of effectiveness and those that are promising but require further testing.
1. Hiring and selection
Employers are advised to standardise recruitment processes by using structured interviews with consistent questions and anchored scoring. Job adverts should include clear salary ranges and specify flexible working options by default. Skill-based assessments, designed around real job tasks and with pre-defined scoring, can reduce bias. Employers are encouraged to experiment with promising measures such as targeted referrals to underrepresented groups, reviewing job adverts for gendered language, and considering applicants in batches rather than individually.
2. Talent management, learning and development
Transparency in progression, pay and reward processes is strongly supported. Employees should know how decisions are made and managers should be required to evidence those decisions. Calibration processes, where managers review and align each other’s ratings or hiring outcomes, can help ensure fairness. Employers are encouraged to test mentoring, sponsorship and networking programmes, as well as opt-out promotion systems, to increase participation by women. Work experience schemes such as internships and traineeships should be designed to be accessible and fairly remunerated.
3. Inclusion and retention
Flexible working arrangements should be normalised across all roles and levels, with senior leaders modelling their use. Encouraging men as well as women to take parental leave and flexible options reduces stereotypes and improves equality. Employers should ensure grievance procedures are accessible and effective, while supplementing them with alternative support mechanisms such as mediation or anonymous reporting channels. These measures are important in light of the new statutory duty to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment at work.
4. Leadership and accountability
Employers should set specific, time-bound and measurable internal targets for gender representation and equality. Progress should be monitored, reviewed and reported regularly, ideally through public commitments. Appointing diversity leads or taskforces at a senior level ensures accountability across all departments. These roles must be given authority to scrutinise decisions on hiring, promotion and pay, with access to relevant data to track progress.
Practical advice for employers
Employers should take a data-driven approach. Start with internal analysis: recruitment funnels, pay gaps, promotion rates, turnover patterns and use of flexible working. Use this data to target interventions where disparities are greatest. Update job advert templates to include salary ranges and flexible working, implement structured interviews, and monitor pay decisions for bias. Ensure promotion and reward systems are transparent and calibrated. Train managers in objective decision-making, role-model flexibility at senior levels, and strengthen grievance and anti-harassment processes.
Evaluation is key. Employers can run pilots before scaling initiatives. Larger organisations may consider controlled trials across departments, while smaller ones can monitor before-and-after data. Whichever approach is chosen, actions should be tested for impact and adjusted if unintended effects are identified.
Need Assistance?
Failing to act exposes employers to several risks. Under the Equality Act, discrimination and equal pay claims can result in uncapped compensation. Breaches of the statutory duty to prevent harassment can increase tribunal awards by up to 25% and draw regulatory enforcement. Gender pay gap reporting failures damage reputation and invite scrutiny from regulators and stakeholders. Grievance mismanagement can also lead to compensation uplifts where the Acas Code is not followed.
Beyond legal exposure, ineffective or poorly designed diversity measures undermine employee trust and harm employer brand.
The most effective actions are those that build transparency, fairness and accountability into everyday systems of recruitment, progression and reward. Employers who implement these measures and evaluate their impact will not only comply with statutory duties but also strengthen workforce engagement, retention and performance.
For specialist guidance for your organisation, contact us.
Author
Founder and Managing Director Anne Morris is a fully qualified solicitor and trusted adviser to large corporates through to SMEs, providing strategic immigration and global mobility advice to support employers with UK operations to meet their workforce needs through corporate immigration.
She is recognised by Legal 500 and Chambers as a legal expert and delivers Board-level advice on business migration and compliance risk management as well as overseeing the firm’s development of new client propositions and delivery of cost and time efficient processing of applications.
Anne is an active public speaker, immigration commentator, and immigration policy contributor and regularly hosts training sessions for employers and HR professionals.
