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Preparing for EU Pay Transparency

A practical roadmap to get your house in order ahead of 2026.

The countdown to 7 June 2026 is on. That’s when the EU Pay Transparency Directive comes into force across all EU member states – legislation that will fundamentally change how organisations define jobs, determine pay and report on fairness.

This is not just another pay reporting requirement. The Directive puts pay transparency and fairness at the heart of how organisations operate. Employees will gain new rights to understand how pay is determined, to see average pay levels for people doing the same work or work of equal value and to question differences. Employers will have to explain and, where necessary, correct unjustified pay gaps.

With the first reports due in 2027 (based on 2026 data), the window to prepare is closing fast.
Why this matters

For decades, equal pay has been part of EU law — enshrined in Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Equal Pay Directive 2006/54/EC. Yet pay inequality has persisted, largely because of one thing: a lack of transparency. Employees often cannot see how pay decisions are made or how their pay compares with others doing similar work. 

The new Directive changes that. Adopted in May 2023, it is designed to make fairness visible — giving employees the right to information and forcing employers to demonstrate that their pay systems are based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. 

It introduces seven core rights and obligations that bring pay decisions into the open: 

  • Transparency before employment – Employers must state the initial pay or pay range in job adverts or before the first interview and cannot ask candidates about pay history. 
  • Transparency for employees – Workers have the right to know the criteria used to determine pay and progression. 
  • Access to information – Employees can request average pay levels, broken down by gender, for those doing the same work or work of equal value. 
  • Gender pay gap reporting – Employers must publish pay gap data across the organisation and by category of workers. 
  • Action on gaps – Where gender pay gaps exceed 5% and cannot be justified by objective gender-neutral criteria, employers must take corrective measures. 
  • Protection for disclosure – Workers who discuss or disclose pay to enforce equal pay rights must be protected from retaliation. 
  • Enforcement and penalties – Member States must ensure employees can seek redress and that penalties are in place for non-compliance. 

The message is clear: this Directive isn’t about paperwork, it’s about accountability. It shines a light on the fairness and consistency of how work and pay are defined, valued and managed across the organisation.

Your roadmap to readiness

At RoleMapper, we’ve translated the Directive’s complex requirements into a practical operational framework. 

Our 8-step roadmap sets out what organisations need to do to prepare for compliance and build the foundations for long-term pay fairness and transparency. 

If you’re at the start of your journey, focus first on these four priority actions – the essential building blocks for readiness.

1. Create your ‘category of worker’ job groupings

The Directive requires pay reporting and employee comparisons to be made by “categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value”. This is the cornerstone of compliance. Start by reviewing and harmonising your job families, levels and grades. Map every role to a defined job and ensure you can group jobs consistently based on objective criteria such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions.

2. Establish a bias-free way to value jobs

Employers must ensure that pay structures are based on objective gender-neutral criteria. Implement a job evaluation or classification system that applies measurable factors such as knowledge, complexity, responsibility and working conditions to determine relative job value. This allows you to demonstrate fairness and justify any pay differences.

3. Define your pay elements and communication strategy

The Directive defines pay broadly, covering base salary, variable pay, allowances and benefits in kind. Organisations need to bring these elements together into a consistent framework and be ready to explain how pay and progression are determined.

4. Prepare for reporting and remediation

Employers with 250 or more employees must begin annual gender pay gap reporting in 2027 (covering 2026 data). Organisations with 150 to 249 employees will report every three years from 2027, and those with 100 to 149 employees every three years from 2031.


Start running test analyses now. Identify any pay gaps greater than 5% within categories of workers and prepare action plans to address gaps that cannot be explained by objective gender-neutral criteria.

The full roadmap to operationalise pay transparency

Once these foundations are in place, the broader roadmap will help you embed sustainable compliance and governance. 

  1. Create flexible job architecture and job groupings 
  2. Build a bias-free mechanism to value your jobs 
  3. Align pay structures to equal work and equal value 
  4. Provide visibility of pay principles 
  5. Define and share pay progression criteria 
  6. Ensure bias-free postings and recruitment processes 
  7. Create, update and govern standardised job descriptions 
  8. Align pay equity analysis and reporting 

Together, these steps form a comprehensive plan to prepare for compliance, strengthen internal fairness and build a foundation for ongoing pay governance.

How RoleMapper helps you get there

RoleMapper is an AI-powered job architecture platform that helps organisations fast-track pay transparency readiness and maintain compliance with the EU Pay Transparency Directive.

RoleMapper gives you a single workspace to design, manage and govern every part of your job framework – job groupings, levels, job families, descriptions and skills. It brings order to fragmented data and ensures your job architecture is always consistent, transparent and audit-ready.

Our AI-driven data tools rapidly create or harmonise your job architecture – even if your existing data is incomplete. We help you: 

  • Create categories of workers based on equal work and equal value 
  • Standardise and update job profiles and descriptions 
  • Define objective, gender-neutral criteria for levelling and progression 

This means you can move quickly from scattered job data to a structured, comparable framework ready for analysis and reporting.

Once your architecture is in place, RoleMapper keeps it current. 
You can: 

  • Continuously track and update jobs, levels and skills 
  • Maintain governance and version control 
  • Embed levelling and evaluation processes to ensure ongoing fairness and transparency

Our platform does more than help you meet the Directive’s requirements – it creates a foundation for sustainable pay fairness, inclusion and trust. 

RoleMapper helps you get your house in order – and keep it that way.

Start preparing today

The EU Pay Transparency Directive represents the most far-reaching pay transparency legislation yet introduced. The timeline may seem distant, but the work to get ready is significant. 

Now is the time to start building the foundations that will make compliance sustainable and straightforward.

RoleMapper
The building blocks of your workforce strategy.

Role Mapper Technologies Ltd
Kings Wharf, Exeter
United Kingdom

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