Why do employers fear a “wave of pay rises”?
The fear of a “wave of pay rises” comes from the fact that the average pay of women and men doing the same work is not the same. It has long been known that pay discrimination exists, even in a country like Poland, where women have gone out to work ever since they were first able to. Employers intuitively sense that unequal pay may be a problem in their own organisation.
The most common comment I hear from male CEOs is “women have come up with something again, we don't have that problem here”. Then it turns out that the pay difference between women and men is 10 to 20%. That is a lot if pay has to be raised, given that pay makes up a significant share of employers' spending.
What do you do with a gap like that? What happens when dissatisfied workers come knocking? Which is worse: demotivation and possible staff departures, or embarrassment and a loss of credibility when the data becomes public? The answer starts with calculating the gap and checking how much of it can be justified, before workers do it themselves.
What will a worker see when they use the right to information about pay?
When a worker asks about pay, they will see the average pay of women and men in jobs of equal value to their own. This is the right to information. Not pay ranges, not the pay of individual colleagues, but average pay levels. What is more, these averages are based on the value of the work, not on the average for a given job title.
What is the difference? A specialist, a manager and a technician can all have the same value to the organisation. Even if they work in different departments, their skills and way of working can be of equal value to the employer. This is exactly what pay transparency means.
Why can't pay be compared without job evaluation?
Workers doing the same work or work of equal value can hold different jobs. That is why calculating the average that employers will communicate to workers requires job evaluation. Job evaluation is a method of assessing the value a given job has for an organisation, regardless of who holds it. Jobs are assessed against the same criteria (skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions), and the result makes it possible to group them into categories of comparable value and assign them to levels of the pay structure. Job evaluation is the starting point for calculating average pay and any differences between women and men. Evaluating jobs according to defined rules is a new obligation for every organisation bound by labour law.
How do you calculate the gender pay gap before workers start asking?
The method of calculating the gender pay gap is set out in the draft act implementing the directive (UC127). The directive itself describes the method fairly generally and leaves many questions to be settled nationally. Polish rules are not yet fully ready. They are, however, enough to calculate the main indicators, namely the pay gap in basic and variable pay, in hourly terms and converted to full-time equivalents (normalised data).
Employers with more than 100 workers will be required to report data on the average pay of men and women. The part of this data that covers averages at the level of the whole organisation will become public. So there is no point waiting for the act to come into force. To avoid a possible wave of pay rises, it is worth “arming yourself with information” today.
Does every pay gap mean pay rises?
Not every pay gap is bad or means immediate pay rises. Exceeding the 5% level does not mean the gap has to be closed immediately. The new rules allow for situations in which pay differences are justified, and the gap is then justified too. Equal pay applies where a woman and a man do work of equal value.
But let us imagine a scenario involving sales staff whose pay depends on sales results. In that case, the principle of equal pay would mean (in simplified terms, leaving aside other circumstances) that the same turnover generated, regardless of gender, earns the same pay. A gap can be justified by various factors. What matters is that they are objective and properly documented.
How do you avoid claims?
The best protection against claims is to correct unjustified differences before a worker asks about them. A company should therefore calculate the gap early, establish its causes and correct the part that cannot be explained by objective, gender-neutral criteria. We leave a justified gap as it is, but we record the criteria on which it rests, so that we can show them in response to a worker's request. Documentation matters enormously in legal proceedings: under the directive, the burden of proof shifts to the employer if it has not met its information or reporting obligations (Article 18(2)), and limitation periods for claims may not be shorter than 3 years (Article 21(1)). The response to a worker's request should therefore be ready before the request reaches the HR department.
Status of the law as at 9 October 2026. Draft act UC127 has not yet been passed.
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