Workers' Councils: How beqom Helps Secure Employee Rights in Pay Equity

Workers' councils and staff representatives are moving to the center of compensation management, driven by regulations like the EU Pay Transparency Directive. For HR leaders and compensation and benefits professionals, this shift is an opportunity, not only a compliance task.

Organizations that engage proactively with the workers' council, backed by the right technology, build a reputation for fairness, earn greater employee trust, and gain a real edge in talent acquisition. The goal is to treat pay transparency as a driver of positive change: fair, provable outcomes for every employee.

What is the role of the workers' council in pay equity?

The workers' council and staff representatives play an essential and growing role in establishing and maintaining fair pay practices, particularly under the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Their involvement keeps pay equity efforts transparent, objective, and responsive to employee concerns.

Key areas of involvement include:

• Defining fair pay criteria: Agreeing on objective, gender-neutral criteria used to assess work of equal value, so pay structures can be evaluated impartially.
• Requesting pay information: The right to information on average pay levels for categories of workers, broken down by sex, on behalf of employees.
• Reviewing reports: Consulting on the accuracy of gender pay gap reporting and reviewing the methodology behind it.
• Joint pay assessment: Taking part in the joint pay assessment process whenever a significant, unaddressed gender pay gap is found.
• Remediation: Helping shape the measures that fix unjustified pay differences.
• Protecting privacy: Where local law allows, accessing sensitive individual pay data to advise employees on claims without disclosing actual pay levels, keeping employers compliant while protecting worker privacy.

Together, these responsibilities give workers' councils real weight in how organizations set, review, and correct pay.

What are the key employee rights outlined by the EU Pay Transparency Directive?

The EU Pay Transparency Directive introduces new rights for employees, built around equal pay for work of equal value and greater transparency across the organization.

The core rights and matching employer obligations include:

• Right to information on pay levels: Employees can request their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for comparable workers doing the same job or work of equal value.
• Regular reporting on gender pay gaps: Employers must report on gender pay gaps regularly and, where the unexplained gap is significant, run a joint pay assessment.
• Protection against reprisal: Employees can disclose their own pay without fear of retaliation.
• Access to methodology: Staff representatives can access the methodology employers use to calculate and report the pay gap.

These rights change the dynamic: employers need data-driven, objective evidence behind every pay decision, and a genuine collaboration with the workers' council throughout the pay equity process.

How does beqom support the joint pay assessment and remediation?

A joint pay assessment, triggered when a significant pay gap exists, calls for more than manual data work. It calls for an objective, auditable process, which is where a purpose-built comp platform earns its place.

beqom's pay equity and transparency tool supports this process by:

• Identifying the gap: Using multivariate regression analysis to weigh salary, job role, experience, and seniority against each other, then flagging unexplained differences as a potential pay gap, for example between male and female workers in similar roles.
• Providing objective methodology: Giving a consistent methodology for analysis, which matters because workers' representatives have the right to see how the gender pay gap is calculated and reported.
• Planning remediation: Turning complex analysis into practical pay adjustments, so employers can model pay increases that close the gap within real budget constraints.
• Facilitating consultation: Producing reports that are clear and customizable for both management and the workers' council, so joint pay assessment discussions stay fact-based.
• Protecting data: Managing data aggregation and anonymization, so the workers' council gets the access it needs while individual, identifiable pay information stays protected.

The result: a joint pay assessment grounded in evidence, not opinion, and a remediation plan both sides can stand behind.

Why choose beqom for pay equity and workers' council collaboration?

beqom is trusted by global organizations to manage fair pay across diverse regulatory landscapes. It is an independent, objective platform built on industry standards, designed for the needs of employers and workers' councils alike.

That trust runs deeper than the technology itself. beqom's consultants regularly run workshops that walk works councils through the methodology behind the platform, showing exactly how it delivers fairness and transparency. This includes work with strong, mature works council structures in countries like Germany and France, where representatives expect, and get, a clear line of sight into how the numbers are built.

With beqom, organizations can:

• Proactively comply with the EU Pay Transparency Directive and other global regulations.
• Ensure fair pay with a transparent, objective, gender-neutral methodology.
• Build trust through clear, customizable reporting that simplifies pay assessment for management and staff representatives.
• Streamline collaboration on joint pay assessment and remediation with evidence-based insights that avoid disputes.
• Protect privacy while meeting the legal right to information.

beqom helps companies like Puma and Allianz manage fair pay for hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide, giving them the means to achieve, and prove, pay equity.