The EU Directive’s ‘Right to Information’ Part II: What Happens Next?

A core principle underlying the EU Pay Transparency Directive is that increasing pay transparency will help to close pay gaps and improve pay equity. Article 7 plays a key role in this dynamic by guaranteeing employees the right to information about their own pay, and their position within the organization’s pay structure. In Part I of this article, we discussed how your organization can design effective pay requests and information dissemination processes. 

In Part II, we’ll share some best practices for meaningful conversations about pay, explain how you can set your managers and HRBPs up for success, and explore the role of worker councils and employee representatives. 

1. As with the initial information requests, make sure you have a system in place to track the date of the clarification request, its resolution deadline, and its progress. This system should also provide alerts about approaching deadlines.
2. Make sure that clarification requests are written into your organization’s pay transparency policies.
3. Create pay explainability reports that provide a more in-depth look at an individual employee’s pay. These reports can be generated by HR teams.
4. Train your HRBPs and managers on how to navigate these reports.
5. Get feedback from employees about the pay information sheets that you provide to them. If they’re not understanding the information, work on making this information clearer to reduce the number of clarification requests.

We also want to note that Article 7 leaves some room for interpretation about the employer’s obligation to respond to a clarification request. The exact wording is:

Regardless of the quality of the information your organization provides, there are quite a few reasons why an employee might perceive it to be inaccurate or incomplete. For example: 

They might not understand the determinants of pay or the pay scale.

• They might have questions about the role of non-monetary compensation.
• They may want to know why they didn’t get a raise last year.  

At this point, the organization should have a conversation with the employee. When conducted correctly, these conversations offer the opportunity to increase employee engagement and trust.

Supporting meaningful conversations about pay: Training for managers and HRBPs 

The people who are most likely to have 1-1 conversations about pay are managers and/or HRBPs. To make sure that these conversations go well, it’s important to support the people in these roles. This starts with adequate training. 

Training for managers and HRBPs should cover:

• The organization’s pay philosophy.
• The criteria that determine pay—and how and why employees move up within the pay structure.
• Pay explainability reports or other documents provided to employees, including where the information comes from and how the numbers are determined.
• The results of the organization’s pay equity analysis, including any pay gaps identified.
• What the organization will be doing to remediate any pay gaps.

 Here are some best practices on how to conduct conversations about pay:

• Make sure to hear and acknowledge emotions that may come up.
• Refer to the facts and figures, like dashboards or information sheets, rather than getting sidetracked into personal opinions.
• Talk about the process of how compensation decisions were made.
• Scripts or conversation templates can help.
• Encourage managers to refer to HR managers if in doubt, instead of giving answers they may not have full confidence in. 

Our manager’s guide to pay transparency conversations gives much more guidance on supporting managers and HRBPs, and includes example scripts for 8 common scenarios.

Involving worker councils and employee representatives 

According to Article 7, worker councils or employee representatives may in some cases request pay information on behalf of employees. This means that as you plan the processes for your employees to request and receive information, you may need to factor in these organizations as well.

It’s important to note that worker council roles will be defined at the country level, so regulations will vary among EU member states. We encourage you to keep an eye on how local transposition unfolds. 

Here are some things to consider: 

• You may want to include worker councils at an early stage by involving them in the development of your information request and communication processes. 
• It’s also a good idea to provide worker councils and employee representatives with training. In fact, much of the training content—specifically, pay philosophy, determinants of pay, and the pay explainability reports or documents provided to employees—could overlap with the content of your HRBP/manager training. 
• When planning your processes, make sure that employee privacy is protected. You may need to use secure data sharing platforms. 

How beqom can help

beqom helps organizations worldwide implement fair and transparent pay practices. Our Pay Transparency tool streamlines pay communications by creating easy-to-understand reports at the click of a button.