The situation
The company’s pay structures and grading criteria, uploaded
An Amsterdam engineering firm with 640 employees in the Netherlands has twelve salary bands and a job-grading system built up over twenty years. The board has asked the HR lead what the Pay Transparency Directive will require, whether the current structure can meet it, and what has to change first.
The directive is detailed, and the Dutch implementing law is its own question. Then comes the comparison: do the bands rest on objective, gender-neutral criteria, can the firm explain the gaps it will have to report, and where is work of equal value hidden under different job titles?
What the research has to settle
The rules behind the answer
- Pay structures must use neutral criteria
- Employers must have pay structures that ensure equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria such as skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, agreed with workers’ representatives where they exist.
- Applicants and employees get information
- Applicants are entitled to information on the starting pay or its range before the interview, and employers may not ask about pay history. Employees can request their own pay level and the average pay levels, by sex, for workers doing the same work or work of equal value.
- Reporting depends on company size
- Employers with 250 or more workers report on the gender pay gap every year. Those with 150 to 249 report every three years, and those with 100 to 149 every three years from a later start. A firm of 640 is in the annual group.
- A 5% unexplained gap triggers action
- Where reporting shows a gap of at least 5% in a category of workers that the employer cannot justify by objective, gender-neutral criteria and does not remedy within six months, a joint pay assessment with workers’ representatives follows.
How it runs in azta
From the question to the document
The question, as you would type it
We have 640 employees in the Netherlands and attach our salary bands and job-grading criteria. What will the Pay Transparency Directive require of us, where does the Dutch implementing legislation stand, and which features of our structure are likely to need change?
You start with
The company’s pay structures and grading criteria, uploaded
- 01
Upload the pay structure
Add the salary bands, the grading criteria and the allowance policy. azta reads them and refers back to the passage it relied on.
File upload· Pro - 02
Research the obligations
Ask what the directive requires and where the Dutch implementing law stands. azta cites the directive, Dutch legislation and the Court of Justice case law on equal pay.
Cited research· Free - 03
Draft the readiness memo
Ask for a memo: what applies, where the structure meets it, where it falls short and what to do first. Edit it in Canvas.
Canvas · Ask azta· Pro You send
A memo on the pay transparency obligations and where the current structure falls short
What you get
A memo on the pay transparency obligations and where the current structure falls short
Readiness memo · draft
Pay transparency: readiness of the current pay structure
What applies. With 640 workers, the firm will report on the gender pay gap every year once the Dutch implementing law applies. The status of that law and the first reporting year are set out in Annex 1, with the sources as at the date of this memo.
Pay structure. The twelve bands rest on documented criteria for knowledge, responsibility and working conditions, which is close to what the directive expects. Two features need work: discretionary allowances in bands 7 to 9, which have no written criteria, and engineering and project-control roles in different job families that may be work of equal value.
Recruitment. The directive requires pay information before interview and bars questions on pay history. Vacancy texts and interview scripts can be changed now, ahead of the implementing law.
Outcomes on your numbers
What azta is worth on this task
Pro pays for itself after
18 minutes a month
At €95 an hour, that is all the time Pro (€27 a month) has to take off your desk to cover its price.
Example figures. Replace them with your own.
- Hours back a year
- 32
- Capacity at your rate
- €3,078
- More pay transparency memos a quarter
- 0.8
- Return on Pro
- 9.5×
- Research
- Drafting
- Your review
A scenario you set, not a promise. The hours that come back go to another client, or deeper into this one.
Want these numbers on your team’s real workload?
Book a demoSources azta searches here
- EUR-Lex · Curia
- wetten.overheid.nl
- Rechtspraak.nl
What stays with you
- The job evaluation and the pay data.
- Consulting the works council.
- The board’s decisions on what to change.
Frequently asked questions
- Does azta calculate our pay gap?
- No. It reads the pay structure you upload and researches the obligations. Calculating the gap stays in your HR or payroll system.
- How do I follow the Dutch implementing law?
- Legislation in azta is indexed daily. Ask again as the law progresses; for a bill not yet in force, upload the text and azta reads it with the directive.
- Does it cover the works council’s rights?
- Yes. Ask about the works council’s role in changes to the pay system and azta cites the Dutch works councils legislation.
