25/09/2026
From spring 2027, "we're working on it" stops being an answer.
In March 2026 the UK government published guidance for employers on creating an equality action plan. It covers the gender pay gap and support for employees experiencing menopause, and it applies across England, Scotland and Wales. Right now it is voluntary for employers with 250 or more staff. Subject to legislation, it becomes mandatory from spring 2027.
That is a short runway, and most organisations will spend it arguing about wording. So here is the more useful version for anyone who wants to be a genuinely helpful ally rather than a supportive bystander.
The guidance sets out six steps: understand your organisation's issues, choose your actions, develop the narrative, publish the plan, track outcomes, review progress. Read plainly, that is a sequence most employers currently do in reverse - narrative first, evidence later, outcomes never.
Four questions worth asking in your organisation this month. None of them require you to hold a DEI brief, and all of them are answerable:
1. Which of our six published pay gap figures moved last year, and do we know why? Not the headline mean - the quartile distribution, which is where the actual story lives.
2. Who owns the action plan by name? An action plan with a committee as its owner has no owner.
3. What are we choosing not to do, and why? A plan that contains only additions is a wish list.
4. What will we measure in twelve months, and who sees it? If the answer is only the board pack, it is not tracking, it is reporting.
Allyship is often described as advocacy. In practice, at this level, it is mostly diligence: reading the guidance before the deadline and asking the four questions no one wants to answer in October.
The guidance itself is free and short: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-an-action-plan-guidance-for-employers
Working through this with people who are doing the same thing is quicker than doing it alone. That is what PWN London Premium Membership is for - our members, and our allies, use each other as the pressure test. Join here: https://www.pwnglobal.net/c/pwn-london/content/individual-member
