ChecklistPeople & Organizational Performance
EU Pay Transparency Directive checklist: job architecture, pay data and reporting
Directive (EU) 2023/970 gives job applicants and workers rights to pay information, bans questions about pay history and requires employers above set sizes to report gender pay gaps. Its transposition deadline has passed and national laws are arriving unevenly12. This checklist covers the preparation that does not depend on the final national text: job architecture, pay data, recruitment, information requests, reporting and joint pay assessments.
On this page
- What Directive (EU) 2023/970 requires, and the state of national law
- Job architecture and gender-neutral job evaluation
- Pay data inventory: every component, one source
- Recruitment: pay ranges up front, no pay-history questions
- Workers' rights to pay information
- Gender pay gap reporting dates by employer size
- Joint pay assessment trigger and remediation
- Explaining pay gaps with objective, gender-neutral factors
- Questions and answers
- Sources
What Directive (EU) 2023/970 requires, and the state of national law
The Directive applies to employers in the public and private sectors, to workers with an employment contract or employment relationship as defined in each country, and, for its recruitment rules, to job applicants1. Member States had until 7 June 2026 to transpose it1.
At that deadline only a few countries had adopted comprehensive legislation; others had partial measures, drafts with later effective dates, or nothing published at all2. The details that matter most to employers, such as how categories of workers are defined, how reports are submitted and which penalties apply, come from national law. Check the current position in every country where you employ people, and expect it to keep changing.
Job architecture and gender-neutral job evaluation
Pay data inventory: every component, one source
Recruitment: pay ranges up front, no pay-history questions
Workers' rights to pay information
Gender pay gap reporting dates by employer size
Reports cover indicators including the mean and median gender pay gap, gaps in variable pay, the share of each sex receiving variable pay, distribution across pay quartiles and gaps by category of workers1.
| Size band | Workers | First report due | After that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest employers | 250 or more1 | By 7 June 20271 | Every year1 |
| Mid-sized employers | 150 to 2491 | By 7 June 20271 | Every three years1 |
| Smaller in-scope employers | 100 to 1491 | By 7 June 20311 | Every three years1 |
| Below the reporting threshold | Fewer than 1001 | No duty under the Directive; voluntary reporting is possible and national law may go further1 | Not applicable |
Dates come from Article 9 of the Directive. National law can bring them forward or add detail, so confirm each country's rules.
Joint pay assessment trigger and remediation
Explaining pay gaps with objective, gender-neutral factors
- If
A gap disappears once grade or category is taken into account.
ThenLook at representation and progression: who is hired into which grades, and who is promoted.
An explained gap can still point to an unequal pipeline.
- If
A gap remains within a category of equal-value work.
ThenInvestigate individual pay decisions, starting pay and variable awards, and prepare remediation with counsel.
This is the pattern the joint assessment trigger is aimed at.
- If
An explanatory factor might itself reflect bias, such as performance ratings.
ThenTest the factor for differences by sex before using it to justify pay.
A biased factor turns a discriminatory pattern into an apparently neutral explanation.
- If
Results cannot be reproduced from the documented method.
ThenFix the data pipeline before reporting anything.
Workers, representatives and authorities may ask exactly how a figure was produced.
Questions and answers
Does the Pay Transparency Directive apply to employers headquartered outside the EU?
It applies to employers in respect of workers in the Member States, so a group headquartered elsewhere must comply for its EU workforce under each country's transposing law. How workers are counted for the size thresholds, and which legal entity reports, depend on national rules, so confirm both with counsel in every country where you employ people.
Do small employers have to report their gender pay gap?
Employers with fewer than 100 workers have no reporting duty under the Directive itself, although they may report voluntarily and national law can go further1. Their other obligations still apply: pay information for applicants, the ban on pay-history questions, workers' rights to information and gender-neutral pay structures.
How does the Directive interact with UK gender pay gap reporting?
They are separate regimes. In Great Britain, private and voluntary sector employers with 250 or more employees report under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017, which the Directive does not change; public bodies report under separate rules3. A group with staff in both the UK and the EU will run two sets of calculations with different definitions and dates, so design the pay data model to support both.
Can we still ask candidates about their salary expectations?
The Directive prohibits asking about pay history in current or previous jobs; it does not expressly ban discussing expectations1. Check national law, which may be stricter, and avoid using expectations in a way that recreates past gaps, for example by anchoring offers to them rather than to the published range.
Sources
- Directive (EU) 2023/970 to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms — EUR-Lex · checked 10 October 2026
- Did Member States meet the deadline? Status of implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive — Littler · checked 10 October 2026
- The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 — legislation.gov.uk · checked 10 October 2026