Employment Law | Why gender-neutral job evaluation is key to EU pay transparency compliance

Gender-neutral job evaluation and classification play a key role in preparing for the salary transparency measures contained in the EU Pay Transparency Directive.

The Directive, which will become law across EU member states next year, requires companies to be more transparent around pay as a means of ensuring equal pay for work of equal value.

Gender-neutral criteria is a phrase mentioned throughout the EU Directive, and these criteria need to be used when grouping jobs of equal work and value, when carrying out job evaluation, and to ensure debiased recruitment processes.

For example, the Directive requires that organisations have pay structures based on job evaluation and classification systems that use ‘objective, gender-neutral criteria’. Article 4 states: