Pay Transparency

Did you know that on average, women make 82% of what men make for the same work? You may be familiar with the Gender Wage Gap, and it’s precisely because of an effort to close this gap that the Remuneration Transparency Act, or Entgelttransparenzgesetz exists.

The purpose of the Pay Transparency Act (Entgelttransparenzgesetz) is to enforce the principle that people should be paid the same amount for the same work or work that provides the same value. Not doing so has a great deal of societal and long-term problems, but ultimately, it’s just the right thing to do.

With this act, employees are empowered; transparency forces companies to examine their practices and furthermore, ensures that discrepancies can be resolved by recalibration of wages. Employees can ask: how wages are determined, the current gender pay gap at the company, how compensation is packaged (base salary, stock options, bonuses) and how they fall within their salary range/salary band.

Note; there have been trends to push for companies to be fully transparent about their wages for all employees and on job descriptions for prospective companies; this is currently not covered within this act. However, this is a great step in the right direction of fixing the discrepancies and once and for all, ensuring all people are earning the same for the same work.