Gender gap, one year to align new wage models

Companies have not realised it yet, but in the coming months their organisation will undergo a major change: the adaptation to the 2023Equal Pay Directive 970. This directive has already been definitively approved by the European Union and must be implemented by each of the EU member states by 7 June 2026. A deadline by which companies will have to be ready, preparing to revolutionise their organisational models and career management practices. While waiting for the internal regulatory transposition process to be completed, let us see which aspects are affected by the biggest changes.

The first, big change is legal and cultural: although many anti-discrimination regulations already exist, a clear statement of the principle of equality was missing until now. The directive fills this gap, stating that equal pay must be recognised for equal work or work of equal value.

Not an easy step: we will neednew job classification criteria that are clear, consistent and applied uniformly to all employees. Companies will also have to adopt objective parameters to determine pay (fixed and variable), raises and promotions, providing employees with clear information on how pay levels are set and, in particular, on how much women and men are paid for the same work or work of equal value. We can say goodbye, then, to totally discretionary superannuation and bonuses paid with a few lines of thanks: companies will have to formalise promotions and pay increases by anchoring them to objective and neutral criteria. Bearing in mind that the obligation to ensure equal treatment does not only concern salaries, but the entire remuneration package, including any fringe benefits.

In order to verify that the principle of gender pay equality is respected, the directive establishes the right of workers and trade unions to access gender-disaggregated salary data and to know the criteria used to define salary increases; a very extensive duty of transparency, which could generate quite a few conflicts on the employee and trade union relations tables. This transparency duty will be more intense and structured for companies with more than 250 employees, which will have to draw up periodically detailed reports on the gender pay gap, to ensure constant monitoring of the situation.

All this information will have to be circulated in such a way as to allow all stakeholders to check one fundamental aspect: the possibleexistence of unequal situations. If the company data should reveal a gender pay gap of over 5%, in fact, and this is not justified by objective criteria, the employer will be obliged to intervene, initiating a joint discussion with the workers' representatives to identify the causes of the disparity and taking the necessary corrective measures. More generally, the sanctions for non-compliance with equal pay obligations can be significant: wage differences, damages, fines and corrective measures. Not forgetting the possible impact on corporate reputation of an accusation of discrimination.