This is the sixth blog in a new series of blogs that focuses on Article 7’s Right to Information requirement. Access the previous installments below:
- Blog 1: Challenges and How to Ensure Compliance
- Blog 2: Response Deadlines and Annual Worker Notification Requirements
- Blog 3: How Member States Are Addressing Privacy and GDPR Considerations
- Blog 4: How Right to Information Could Drive Equal Pay Claims Across Entities
- Blog 5: What Counts as “Pay”? The Question Employers Must Answer Before June 2026
One of the more technically complex questions emerging from national transpositions of Article 7 is how employers should handle workers who do not work standard full-time hours.
Part-time workers are common across the European Union — in some countries, they represent a substantial share of the workforce — and their inclusion in Right to Information (RTI) responses raises important questions about how pay should be measured and compared.
The answer depends on how “pay level” is defined under the Directive, how Member States are approaching the annualization of pay, and how hourly pay is calculated. National drafts are already diverging on each of these dimensions.
How the Directive Defines Pay Level
The EU Pay Transparency Directive defines “pay level” as gross annual pay and the corresponding gross hourly pay. This two-part definition is significant: even where part-time workers may distort the comparability of gross annual pay within a worker category — because part-time employees earn less annually than full-time employees in the same role — the gross hourly pay figure is designed to control for that effect.
In other words, the Directive’s dual output of annual and hourly pay is not accidental. The hourly figure exists precisely to make pay comparable across workers with different working time arrangements.
Should Gross Annual Pay Be Annualized for Part-Time Workers?
While the Directive does not require annualization of pay for part-time workers, a number of Member States and advisory bodies have taken positions on whether gross annual pay should be adjusted to a full-time equivalent before inclusion in RTI outputs.
The German Commission recommended that the implementing act clarify that pay differences should be documented on the basis of full-time equivalents, insofar as a report relates solely to gross annual pay. Notably, the Commission did not explicitly extend this recommendation to RTI — leaving some ambiguity about whether the same approach applies in the individual request context.
The Netherlands takes a different position. According to the Dutch explanatory notes, part-time work is not adjusted to full-time equivalency for annual pay. The reasoning is deliberate: part-time work can contribute to the wage gap, and that effect should remain visible, particularly in the Netherlands, where part-time employment is relatively prevalent.
Because the wage gap must be calculated based on both annual and hourly wages, the part-time factor is captured in the hourly wage calculation, making pay differences per hour visible regardless of the number of hours worked.
Poland similarly clarifies in its explanatory notes that annual gross pay is not adjusted for part-time work. As with the Netherlands, Poland treats hourly pay as the mechanism through which part-time effects are accounted for.
How Should Hourly Pay Be Calculated?
Separate from the annualization question is how Member States define the denominator in the hourly pay calculation — that is, whether employers should use actual hours worked or contractual hours.
This distinction matters. Actual hours include overtime and other variations from scheduled work, while contractual hours reflect only the hours an employee is obligated to work under their employment agreement. Each approach produces different outputs and places different administrative demands on employers.
Germany’s Commission and Poland both specify that contractual hours should be used. This approach is administratively simpler, as contractual hours are typically captured in employment agreements and do not require tracking of daily time records. However, it does not account for variations in actual working time, such as overtime, that may affect the true hourly cost of labor.
Poland’s draft law elaborates further. Under the May 2026 draft, gross hourly wages are calculated by dividing the annual gross wage by the number of “standard hours” in a given calendar year for a given employee. Standard hours are defined as hours resulting from the employee’s work schedule — nominal working hours. These are not hours actually worked: overtime is excluded, and absences such as illness are not subtracted.
Lithuania’s approach introduces additional granularity. Under Lithuania’s transposition framework, employers will be required to report both contractual and actual working time to Sodra, the national social insurance authority. This dual reporting structure reflects the data architecture underlying Lithuania’s RTI system, in which employer-submitted data serves as the basis for fulfilling individual employee requests. The procedure for calculating the required information from this data will be established by the Ministry for Social Security and Labour.
How Are New Employees During the Reporting Period Treated?
A related but distinct issue concerns workers who join an employer partway through the 12-month reporting period. For these employees, full-year pay data does not exist, raising the question of whether and how their compensation should be included in RTI outputs.
Poland is one of the only Member States to have specifically addressed this issue to date. The Polish draft allows employers to pro-rate the contractual hours of new employees. As stated in the legislation: when calculating the pay level for a given employee, the employer shall take into account remuneration for the period worked by the employee for that employer during a given calendar year.
This is a practical accommodation that prevents new hires from distorting averages within a worker category — either by pulling down annual pay figures due to partial-year earnings, or by inflating hourly rates if total annual earnings are divided by a full year of hours. Other Member States have not yet addressed this scenario explicitly, which may create inconsistency in how new hires are handled across jurisdictions.
What This Means for Employers
The part-time and hourly calculation questions may appear technical, but they have direct implications for how employers structure their compensation data and respond to RTI requests.
Employers with significant part-time workforces — whether in the Netherlands, Germany, or other high part-time markets — should understand that their jurisdiction may not permit annualization of pay to full-time equivalents, meaning that annual pay figures in RTI outputs will reflect actual annual earnings rather than adjusted comparisons. The hourly figure will carry much of the analytical weight in those cases.
Where contractual hours are used as the denominator for hourly pay, employers will need systems that reliably capture scheduled working time by employee and link it to remuneration data. Employers will also need to be prepared to explain the variations in data that may result, e.g. from the exclusion of overtime hours. Where actual hours are required or available, the data challenge is greater but the output is more precise.
Multinational employers should expect that no single calculation methodology will apply uniformly across all jurisdictions. Preparing adaptable data pipelines — capable of producing both annual and hourly pay outputs under different definitional frameworks — will be essential as national transpositions continue to mature.
How Trusaic Is Helping Clients Comply with Right to Information Requests
At Trusaic, we are helping employers move from reactive compliance to scalable readiness through a comprehensive approach that brings defensible pay equity analysis, automated RTI workflows, and contextual reporting together in a single solution.
At the foundation is a defensible pay equity analysis through PayParity®, which analyzes total remuneration, identifies unjustified gaps, and supports cost-effective remediation through R.O.S.A.® Whether you are responding to your first RTI requests or working to close gaps already surfaced, a validated analysis gives you a clear understanding of risk and the confidence to respond accurately.
That same analysis powers automated RTI workflows. Our bi-directional integrations with global HCM platforms allow pay equity data to flow securely from the Trusaic platform back into the HCM, so employees can access their RTI reports directly within their existing HR systems — eliminating manual report generation and reducing compliance risk.
For organizations that prefer platform-based access, RTI reports can also be generated and delivered securely through the PayParity platform, with role-based permissions and full auditability. Reports can be generated instantly, refreshed regularly, and delivered in any EU language, easing the operational strain on organizations.
Alongside the data, our expert advisory team will assist you in constructing contextual narratives to accompany your RTI reports. Rather than presenting raw pay data without explanation, organizations can configure tailored narratives that reflect their pay philosophy and clarify wage-influencing factors. For large enterprises anticipating thousands of RTI interactions, this significantly reduces administrative burden while improving employee understanding.
Organizations that partner with us will not only be supported in meeting the Directive’s requirements — they will enter this new transparency landscape with confidence and credibility.
