Over 1,500 companies have missed the deadline to report their gender pay gap figures and could face legal action.
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has said that the 1,557 firms will now have a further 28 days to release reports or will be “named and shamed” and face fines.
Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: “Reporting gender pay gaps is not optional; it is a legal requirement, as well as being the right thing to do. We will soon be starting enforcement against all employers that haven’t published.”
Companies with over 250 employees had until Wednesday to report on the difference in average hourly pay between men and women.
Over 10,000 companies have released their data on employee wages and the gap in bonus pay for men and women.
So far, the figures have shown that 78 percent of companies pay men more than women on average. Eight percent had no pay gap between men and women and 14 percent of companies pay women more than men, which included electric car maker Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) and electronics retailer Richer Sounds.
ITN, the group producing news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, reported a bonus pay gap of 50 percent.
The group’s chief executive, John Hardie, said that unless exacting gender and diversity targets” were hit, no bonuses would be paid out.
“We will be introducing a new set of targets which will run alongside the financial goals and will be purely based on hitting strict gender and diversity objectives,” said Hardie. “Let me be clear, if ITN does not achieve these targets I will not receive a penny in bonus. To embed these objectives across the company, all senior management bonuses will also include exacting gender and diversity targets to help get us to where we need to be.”