Austria pay transparency reporting law guide

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Introduction

Despite a sizable 18.8% gender pay gap, Austria has relatively robust pay equity and reporting laws employers must comply with. The “Austrian Equal Treatment Act,” which was amended in 2013, requires employers to:

  • Develop gender pay differences.
  • Do a pay gap significance test.
  • Do an equal pay risk assessment.
  • Provide comprehensive pay gap analysis.
  • Provide a wage distribution analysis.

The Austrian Senates of the Equal Treatment Commission, when requested to do so, investigate whether the principle of equal treatment has been violated. They may also investigate on their own authority.

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Austria Reporting Requirements

Who Needs to Report?

Private employers with 150 or more employees are required to adhere to the Act. There is a separate legal requirement for the Austrian federal government to report on wages for federal employees.

What to Report?

Reporting requirements under the Austrian Equal Treatment Act include details on the number of employees in an organization, as well as details on their remuneration or income.

Employers that permanently employ 150 or more employees are obligated to prepare a "pay analysis" report every two years. The reports must include the following information:

  • The number of women and the number of men in the respective collective agreement or, if available, company employment groups.
  • The number of women and the number of men in the individual employment group years of the applicable employment groups.
  • The average or median wages of women and men in the calendar year in the respective collective agreement or, if available, company employment groups.

The wages of part-time employees must be extrapolated to full-time employment and that of those employed during the year must be extrapolated to annual employment. If there is no applicable collective agreement or company employment group scheme, functional groups must be formed instead of employment groups in accordance with the company's activity structure, in order to break down pay data.

Where and When to Report?

Income reports for the Equal Treatment Act must be submitted to appropriate employee representative bodies. This could be the Central Works Council. If there is no Central Works Council, they should be submitted to the Works Committees.

If no Works Committee has been established, the report will go to the Works Councils in the first quarter of the calendar year following the reporting year. Finally, if no such employee representative bodies exist, the employer must publish the report in a room accessible to all employees with a corresponding announcement of publication. (Section 11.a.3.)

Deadlines and Cadence

Reports must be prepared every 2 years.

Austria Pay Transparency Requirements

Job advertisements must state the minimum monthly salary or minimum wage. Additionally, the requirements and tasks associated with the job must be formulated in such a way that they are gender neutral and do not lead to discrimination against a person on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religion or belief, age or sexual orientation.

Austrian Pay Transparency Law IZA DP No. 14206 went into effect in 2011. The law initially required employers with more than 1,000 employees to provide their employees a pay report every two years.

The law was progressively broadened, and now organizations with at least 150 employees are required to comply with the legislation. The report must at least give the number of men and women in each remuneration group and their mean and median wages.

Employees are not allowed to communicate the results with third parties. Austrian employers can sue employees for a breach in confidentiality. This will be a drastic shift for Austrian employers under the EU Directive, as they will have to be fully transparent about pay and justify pay gaps.

The Risks of Non-Compliance

Reporting Non-Compliance: Per the Act, bodies of the workforce and employees are entitled to be prepared and transmitted or informed about the income report as described above.

In the event of a violation, a claim may be filed by the employee or body of the workforce in court. There is a three-year statute of limitation pursuant to section 1486 of the General Civil Code, whereby the period begins to run at the end of the first quarter of the calendar year following the reporting year.

Discrimination Non-Compliance: The law also specifies the consequences of discrimination for employers (Section 12.1).

Transparency Non-Compliance: Per Section 10 of the Act, employers that do not adhere to the non-discrimination and non-gendered job posting requirements will face fines and potential criminal proceedings. Employers that fail to comply with providing employees requisite pay data as outlined in the Act are subject to fines, penalties and potential employee litigation.

How Can Trusaic Assist with Austria Pay Data Reporting Compliance?

1. Comply - Use Trusaic's RAPTR solution to complete required reporting by compliance deadlines:

Applicability Determination: Perform an accurate assessment of your applicability, according to jurisdictional specific definitions and regulatory frameworks so you can understand your reporting obligations across the globe.

Deadline Management: Prepare ahead of time with project timelines, timely notifications, and reminders, to keep you on track to meeting jurisdictional deadlines.

Expert Legal Guidance and Support: Benefit from the expertise of our trusted pay equity attorneys, so you understand your compliance requirements across a diverse global regulatory landscape. Receive world-class customer support, including assistance throughout the compliance process.

Streamlined Data Extraction: Collect the necessary data for analysis and submission with a simple click of a button; powered by certified data integrations with the world’s largest HCM, HR and Payroll platforms, including Workday, SAP, UKG and ADP. Provide data through Trusaic’s Workplace Equity platform, a SOC 2 Type II and GDPR-compliant tool for data transmission.

Data Quality Assurance: Trusaic performs data validations to ensure your collected data and information aligns with the standards and definitions provided by each jurisdiction.

Compliant Report Outputs: Take away the burden of reporting by effortlessly generating outputs containing necessary compliance information.

Reporting Checklist: Follow step-by-step guidance on where, when and how to report to any jurisdiction’s regulatory body, as well as your required internal disclosure and public posting obligations.

2. Correct - Use PayParity and OpportunityParity to understand, explain and resolve pay disparities:

Risk Assessments: Stay aware of any potential exposure to any government audit or litigation. Our cross-functional team of data scientists, statisticians, and government regulatory compliance experts have rigorously worked to reverse-engineer the calculations that will be used by jurisdictions to estimate pay disparities, so you can prepare in advance.

Understand your Pay Gaps: Leverage Trusaic’s PayParity solution to explain your pay gaps so you can understand the root causes and safeguard from equal pay claims and legal action.

Resolve Pay Disparities: Make pay adjustments where applicable so you can eliminate pay disparities and show improvements in your reported pay gaps from one year to the next.

Identify Barriers to Professional Growth: Ensure workforce diversity and equity with hiring, promotion, retention, and opportunity analytics using OpportunityParity.

3. Communicate - Use Trusaic’s Workplace Equity Solution to communicate narrative and share salary ranges with confidence.

Pay Equity Narrative: Communicate the sources of your pay gaps, progress objectives, and corrective measures to employees and internal stakeholders with Trusaic’s Workplace Equity product suite. Show data-backed progress in your pay gaps over time.

Salary Range Explainability: Use Salary Range Finder to establish and post competitive and equitable pay ranges to confidently comply with pay transparency laws.

Mitigate Risk of Recurrent Pay Disparities:  Ensure new hires receive fair pay offers with the use of external labor market data and internal pay equity analytics to reduce unplanned and expensive pay remediations.

How to Prepare to Comply for the EU Directive

The EU Pay Transparency Directive was approved in 2023, establishing a clear framework for EU member states to apply the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value.

EU member states have three years from June 7, 2023 to transpose the directive into law. Likely implementation dates are 2026, however, some countries may enact legislation earlier. All 27 member states are required to adopt the directive.

Employers operating in EU member states can take several preliminary steps to ensure compliance with the upcoming legislation. The EU Directive includes a requirement for a Joint Pay Assessment where pay gaps are higher than 5%. The Belgian pay gap currently hovers around 5% and is mostly negligible among workers under the age 25. However, the gap widens significantly more for workers aged 44 and older.

Trusaic is GDPR compliant and can assist any organization in any EU state in meeting its obligations under both the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the EU Pay Transparency Directive.