Marino Sveinson & Armina Birdi (LR Advisor)
The Pay Transparency Regulation is now law. The Regulation details the information that affected employers must include in their annual pay transparency reports. For background please see our prior bulletins about the statutory requirements implemented this year pursuant to the Pay Transparency Act (“PTA”) that affect employers in British Columbia: B.C. Introduces the Pay Transparency Act; Pay Transparency Act Update.
As previously outlined, employers who, as of January 1st of the applicable year, have the following number of employees will be required to prepare a pay transparency report:[1]
- 2024: employers with 1,000 employees or more
- 2025: employers with 300 employees or more
- 2026: employers with 50 employees or more
- 2027 onwards: a number that may be less than 50 as prescribed at the time by the provincial government
The Regulation sets out comprehensive requirements that must be followed closely to prepare pay transparency reports that contain the “prescribed information” required by the PTA. In summary, employers must cover a 12-month period which can be the most recently completed financial year for the employer OR the preceding calendar year in which the report is prepared. The Regulation establishes four gender categories for reporting: man, woman, non-binary and unknown. “Unknown” is a category for employees who do not identify with a gender category, do not wish to specify which gender category applies or in situations where the employer does not have information respecting the employee’s gender category. Very importantly, the PTA requires a reporting employer “make reasonable efforts to collect the prescribed information from each employee” during the first year of the reporting period, each time an individual becomes an employee; as well as at least once every calendar year give each employee the opportunity to provide the gender they identify with or update such information. The Regulation establishes that such information must be collected according to the Gender and Sex Data Standard. However, employers must inform employees that disclosure of such gender information is voluntary.
Aside from more basic information set out in the Regulation to be provided in an employer’s report, employers will have to determine a reference gender category for the purposes of carrying out mathematical calculations about the differences in pay among gender categories related to mean and median hourly rate of pay, bonus pay, overtime pay and overtime hours. The percentage of employees in each gender category who received overtime and bonus pay must also be reported. The report must also include a ranking distribution with respect to all employees from lowest hourly rate to highest hourly rate in each gender category. However, for a gender category where there are 10 or more employees or there is only one gender category with more than 10 employees, some of the details are not required to be reported.
In short, impacted employers must take diligent, careful and thorough steps to comply with the reporting obligations established by the PTA and its Regulation.
[1] Province of British Columbia, “Pay transparency reports”, online: Pay transparency laws in B.C.
