This de-identification removes personal identifiers from the working file behind a published pay gap report. Equality Act 2010 s.78 carries the power. The Gender Pay Gap Information Regs 2017 (SI 2017/172) put it into effect. The threshold is 250 or more employees. anonym.plus marks names and identifiers on your device. The required figures stay usable; the staff behind them do not.
When this applies
The published return is six figures. Two are the mean and median hourly gap. Two more are the mean and median bonus gap. Then comes the proportion of each sex receiving a bonus. Last is the proportion in each of four pay quartiles. Those are aggregates. The spreadsheet behind them is not. It holds one row per employee: a name, a National Insurance number, an hourly rate. Private and voluntary sector employers take a 5 April snapshot. Public bodies covered by SI 2017/353 use 31 March. Publication is due within twelve months.
How anonym.plus handles it
- Open the file in anonym.plus on your device.
- Local OCR reads a scanned cover page.
- The tool flags named staff rows, the compiler, and contacts.
- Keep the quartile figures and bonus percentages.
- Swap or black out the confirmed identifiers.
- Save the clean copy locally.
What you need to provide
- The working draft (XLSX export, CSV, PDF).
- An operator (Replace keeps the layout readable).
- Optional allow-list for the quartile labels.
PII entity types detected
| Category | anonym.plus entity type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Names | PERSON | row Priya Nair → [STAFF_1] |
| Financial | MONEY | median pay £42,300 → [AMOUNT] |
| Identifiers | UK_NINO | NI number → [NINO] |
| Contact | EMAIL_ADDRESS | p.nair@example.co.uk → [EMAIL] |
| Organisation | ORGANIZATION | Acme HR → [ORG] |
| Dates | DATE_TIME | snapshot 05/04 → [DATE] |
Compliance achieved
- Supports the duty in Equality Act 2010 s.78. The Gender Pay Gap Information Regs 2017 (SI 2017/172) apply it to employers with 250 or more staff.
- Keeps the six required figures and the four pay quartiles the regulations prescribe.
- Leaves the snapshot date intact — 5 April for private and voluntary employers, 31 March for public bodies under SI 2017/353. The twelve-month publication window runs from that date.
- Works towards the anonymity bar in UK GDPR Recital 26 for the working file. The published aggregate already meets it.
- Offline work keeps a pre-publication draft off any shared server.
Anonymise gender pay gap reports offline — see plans & start free →
Limitations & cautions
The published figures are aggregate. A thin quartile can still re-identify a person. If only one or two staff sit in a band, a row may name them. Suppress or band small cells before you share the working file. The tool does not check the calculations themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Are the published figures already anonymous?
The six required figures are aggregate. The spreadsheet behind them holds a row per employee, with names and pay data. De-identify the draft before it circulates.
Which snapshot date applies to me?
5 April for private and voluntary sector employers under SI 2017/172. 31 March for the public bodies covered by SI 2017/353. Publication is due within twelve months of that date.
Does the file leave my device?
No. The app is fully offline, so the working copy stays local.