British Columbia Gender Pay Gap Reporting: What You Need to Know

To find the full text, refer to British Columbia’s Pay Transparency Act.

The requirement in British Columbia focuses primarily on gender. The reporting requirements and metrics are designed to assess and address the gender pay gaps within organizations. One unique part of British Columbia’s pay gap reporting law, however, is that employers calculate gaps not only for individuals who identify as male or female, but also for employees who identify as non-binary.

While the law doesn’t explicitly require reporting on race/ethnicity pay gaps, many organizations also analyze race and ethnicity gaps as part of their pay transparency strategy, where it is permitted by law. 

Syndio’s PayEQ solution allows you to analyze pay equity and opportunity gaps across multiple dimensions, including race, gender (including for non-binary employees), ethnicity, age, disability, and more. This provides a comprehensive understanding of how different groups are affected by your policies and practices.

If you are not currently collecting information on gender identity, the Pay Transparency Act says that employers must do the following to gather information to calculate pay gaps for employees who identify as male, female, and non-binary.

• First year: Make reasonable efforts to collect the required information from every employee.
• New hires: Make reasonable efforts to collect the required information from each new employee when they join the company.
• Annually: Give every employee the opportunity to provide or update the required information.

Remember, this is about making a good faith effort to gather information. Employee participation is not mandatory.

Pay transparency is gaining momentum across Canada. While nothing is required at the federal level, several provinces including British Columbia (as part of the Pay Transparency Act) require pay scale transparency. Other provinces, including Ontario, have enacted legislation that requires employers to include salary ranges in job postings, essentially making pay information more accessible to potential employees.

Syndio provides software and expert professional services to help multinational organizations comply with pay equity, pay reporting, and pay transparency regulations. Syndio helps you analyze, remediate, explain, and report on gaps so you can stay on top of compliance in British Columbia.  Learn more: https://synd.io/global-pay-reporting/.

The law in British Columbia analyzes pay gaps, not pay equity. What’s the difference? 

An unadjusted pay gap (also called an “uncontrolled pay gap”) is the difference between the median or mean pay of two groups, such as men and women.

• Median pay gap: Imagine lining up all the earnings for two groups of employees (e.g., men and women) from lowest to highest. The median pay gap is the difference between the middle earnings in each line. It’s a good indicator of typical pay differences.
• Mean pay gap: This compares the average earnings of each group. However, it can be skewed by extremely high or low earners.

Pay equity, or the adjusted pay gap, accounts for factors that can legitimately explain differences in pay, such as performance ratings, tenure with the company, or location.

The median and mean pay gaps provide valuable insights, but they don’t tell the whole story. There may be legitimate reasons for pay differences between employees. The adjusted pay gap (pay equity) accounts for these factors, revealing whether a pay disparity truly exists (which is unlawful in many countries) so you can take corrective action. Syndio’s PayEQ software is the trusted solution for global enterprises to rapidly identify, address, and prevent pay disparities.