The EU Pay Transparency Directive (EU 2023/970) is a new EU-wide regulation designed to strengthen pay transparency, reduce unjustified gender pay gaps, and introduce consistent reporting and employee information rights across all Member States. The law creates new obligations for employers in how they publish salaries, structure pay data, report pay gaps, and manage employee pay-information requests.

Who is affected?

The Directive applies to all employers operating in the EU, with reporting obligations phased in based on workforce size:

• 250+ employees → annual gender pay-gap reporting
• 150–249 employees → reporting every 3 years (then annually later)
• 100–149 employees → reporting begins at a later phase (expected after 2031)

All organisations—regardless of size—must support recruitment transparency and employee information rights.

Key employer requirements include:

• Publishing pay ranges in job posts
• Using gender-neutral job criteria
• Providing employees with pay comparison data
• Reporting gender pay gaps and pay differences by category of worker
• Investigating and addressing any unjustified pay gaps above 5%

What about timelines?

EU Member States must transpose the Directive into national law by 7 June 2026.
This means each country will release its own version of the requirements, including:

• Reporting templates
• Response timelines
• Thresholds and remediation rules
• Publication requirements
• Additional local obligations

Organisations operating in multiple EU countries will need to prepare for country-specific differences in scope, timing, and reporting structures.

All employers operating in an EU Member State must comply with the EU Pay Transparency Directive (EU 2023/970). The requirements apply to every organisation, regardless of size, for recruitment transparency and employee information rights — including publishing salary ranges in job postings and responding to employee pay-comparison requests.

The gender pay-gap reporting obligations apply based on organisation size:

• 250+ employees → annual gender pay-gap reporting
• 150–249 employees → reporting every 3 years
• 100–149 employees → reporting begins later (expected after 2031)

Multinational organisations with employees in multiple EU countries must also comply with country-specific transposed laws, which may vary in timelines, templates and reporting rules.

Organisations need accurate job architecture, job levels, pay grades, salary ranges, comparator groups, and complete HR and payroll data. Most employers must correct data inconsistencies before generating compliant gender pay-gap reports or responding to employee pay comparison requests.

EU gender pay-gap reporting requires employers to compile a consistent set of HR and payroll data that allows comparisons between women and men across the organisation and within categories of workers. To meet the Directive’s requirements, organisations must be able to report on:

Core pay data

• Average and median pay levels for women and men
• Median and mean gender pay gaps
• Hourly pay, including fixed and variable components
• Bonus and performance-related pay
• Allowances and supplements where applicable

Workforce structure data

• Number of employees by gender
• Categories of workers (grade, level, job classification or comparable group)
• Full-time, part-time and contract status
• Job evaluation criteria used to define comparable roles

Comparator and grouping logic

• Clear logic for grouping comparable workers
• Standardised job architecture or equivalent classification
• Consistent rules for defining equal work or work of equal value

Additional required metrics

• Gender distribution across pay bands or grades
• Gender distribution in bonus and variable pay
• Pay differences by category of worker

Data quality & evidence

• Reliable, up-to-date HR and payroll master data
• Ability to produce audit-ready evidence
• Documentation supporting gender-neutral pay structures

Each EU Member State may adopt its own templates, processes, and reporting deadlines. Zalaris helps organisations interpret national pay transparency laws, apply local requirements, and deploy a consistent multi-country model for pay-gap reporting and employee information rights.

Zalaris supports multi-country readiness by:

Standardising job and pay structures across regions

• Harmonising job architecture, grades and pay ranges
• Ensuring consistent comparator logic across all EU locations

Aligning HR and payroll data from multiple systems

• Integrating data from SAP and non-SAP payrolls
• Establishing clean, repeatable data sets for gender pay-gap reporting

Configuring SAP SuccessFactors for multi-country transparency

• Activating Recruiting, EC, People Analytics, workflows and reporting structures
• Preparing templates that can be adapted to national variations

Preparing for country-specific reporting rules

• Structuring data to meet different national thresholds and reporting formats
• Enabling evidence capture and audit readiness across all jurisdictions

Supporting long-term scaling

• Roadmaps to expand from foundation → automation → AI and multi-country reporting
• Scalable frameworks for future changes to national legislation or reporting cycles

With deep HR, payroll and SAP SuccessFactors expertise across 100+ countries, Zalaris helps organisations build a unified transparency framework that can flex with each country’s interpretation of EU Pay Transparency requirements.

Zalaris Advisory Services are technology-agnostic and apply to any HR or payroll landscape, including People Hub, SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle, local payroll engines, and legacy systems. We review policies, job architecture, pay governance, data quality, and cross-country requirements to define a clear, compliant pay-transparency framework. Advisory Services establish the foundations -gender-neutral pay criteria, comparator groups, data structures, governance, and reporting standards -before any system configuration begins. This ensures organisations can achieve Directive compliance even if their HR technology is hybrid, decentralised, or not yet configured for pay transparency.

SAP SuccessFactors includes native features for pay transparency, including salary range visibility in Recruiting, pay-range governance in Employee Central, People Analytics Stories for pay-gap reporting, and workflows for employee pay-data requests. These tools help organisations automate reporting and ensure Directive compliance.

Many organisations can support EU Pay Transparency requirements using their existing SAP SuccessFactors modules. However, many environments may need to optimise current configuration, extend functionality, or integrate additional data sources to enable accurate pay-range visibility, comparator insights, and gender pay-gap reporting. Zalaris helps across all scenarios - from refining Recruiting and Employee Central setup to enabling People Analytics Stories, HR Service Delivery workflows, and optional AI capabilities such as Explain My Pay and Joule Studio - ensuring your system is fully prepared to support Directive-aligned transparency and reporting.

SAP SuccessFactors provides the core capabilities needed to support EU Pay Transparency requirements, including pay-range visibility in Recruiting, job and pay-range governance in Employee Central, and People Analytics Stories for gender pay-gap and comparator reporting. It also includes workflow tools — such as Alerts, HR Service Delivery cases, and Work Zone actions — that help manage employee information requests and pay-equity reviews.

SAP SuccessFactors provides the core capabilities needed to support EU Pay Transparency requirements, including pay-range visibility in Recruiting, job and pay-range governance in Employee Central, and People Analytics Stories for gender pay-gap and comparator reporting. It also includes workflow tools — such as Alerts, HR Service Delivery cases, and Work Zone actions — that help manage employee information requests and pay-equity reviews.

Most organisations use these native features as the foundation, then optimise, extend, or integrate additional data to meet their specific workforce and country requirements. Zalaris helps configure, enhance, and connect these SuccessFactors capabilities so your environment fully supports Directive-aligned transparency, reporting, and pay-equity processes.

With SAP introducing EU Pay Transparency Insights in 1H 2026 as part of the People Intelligence package on SAP Business Data Cloud, organisations will have a choice in how they deliver pay transparency insight. Some will continue to rely on SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics Stories for equal pay reporting, while others may extend their capability through SAP’s next-generation analytics. Zalaris helps organisations build the job, pay and data foundations required to support People Stories reporting today - and to adopt EU Pay Transparency Insights in future, if and when it makes sense.

Zalaris provides specialised SAP SuccessFactors Compliance Services that configure the platform’s native capabilities to meet EU Pay Transparency requirements. This includes enabling salary ranges in Recruiting, aligning job grades and ranges in Employee Central, deploying Stories dashboards for gender pay-gap reporting, and setting up workflows for comparator requests. We also support compliance automation using Alerts, HRSD cases, Work Zone actions, and optional AI capabilities like Explain My Pay and Joule Studio skills. These configurations ensure organisations can publish pay ranges, deliver employee pay comparisons, and produce audit-ready reporting from within SAP SuccessFactors.