Croatia Gender Pay Gap Reporting: What You Need to Know

Visit this official website of the European Union for more information on the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Information is available in multiple languages and formats.

The Syndio team is actively monitoring when Croatia and all EU Member States transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Use Syndio’s EU Pay Transparency Directive Transposition Tracker to get the latest status.

Implementing the Directive in Croatia involves more than just a cut-and-paste. The government will need to modify the Directive’s provisions to align with their current legal system. They can choose to adhere to the Directive’s minimum standards or implement stricter measures, a process known as “gold plating.”

The EU Pay Transparency Directive requires more than just measuring pay gaps. It also requires extensive pay transparency. Most of these requirements apply even if you have a single employee in Croatia.

Key transparency requirements:

• Pay scale transparency: Employers will have to share pay ranges with job applicants.
• Banning pay secrecy: Employees will have the right to freely discuss and disclose their pay.
• Prohibiting pay history inquiries: Employers will not be allowed to ask job candidates about their current or previous salary or use that information to set starting pay.
• Mandating gender-neutral job titles: Job titles must be gender-neutral, avoiding terms that imply a specific gender.
• Providing access to pay criteria: Employers must make information available to workers about the gender-neutral criteria used to determine pay, pay levels, and pay progression.
• Right to Information: Workers can request and receive in writing information about the average pay of men and women doing the same work as them or work of equal value, along with information about the employee’s own pay. Employers will be required to inform workers of this right on an annual basis.

Syndio provides customers with detailed guidance and technology solutions on how to comply with the Directive’s pay transparency requirements.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive’s Right to Information requirements build upon existing pay transparency laws, offering employees access to more comprehensive pay data. Starting in 2026, employees in the EU can access in-depth details about their individual pay and compare it to the average earnings of their male and female counterparts in equivalent roles.

Syndio’s PayEQ has a dedicated feature to help you comply with the Right to Information and share data with employees in 24 languages.

For the overall pay gap, employers may need to explain overall pay gaps under the Directive, but there is no requirement to close them.

For the “categories of worker” pay gap, the Directive requires that employers not only analyse and share gender pay gaps but also fix them. If the average gender pay gap is at least 5% in any category of worker and this gap is not explained by objective and gender-neutral factors, and the gap has not been fixed within six months of submitting the gender pay gap report, the employer must perform a joint pay assessment. (A joint pay assessment is a rigorous process conducted in collaboration with the works council or employee representatives to identify the reasons for the pay gap and to develop measures to address it.)

Employers will want to avoid having to go through a joint pay assessment, which is a rigorous process that employers undergo with their works council or other worker representatives. It involves analysing pay structures, identifying any discriminatory practices, and implementing a plan to rectify pay disparities.

If a joint pay assessment is required, it will require assessing:

• The proportion of female and male workers in each category of workers;
• Information on average female and male workers’ pay levels and complementary or variable components for each category of workers;
• Any differences in average pay levels between female and male workers in each category of workers;
• The reasons for such differences in average pay levels, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, if any, as established jointly by the workers’ representatives and the employer;
• The proportion of female and male workers who benefited from any improvement in pay following their return from maternity or paternity leave, parental leave or carers’ leave, if such improvement occurred in the relevant category of workers during the period in which the leave was taken;
• Measures to address differences in pay if they are not justified based on objective, gender-neutral criteria; and,
• An evaluation of the effectiveness of measures from previous joint pay assessments.

The Directive states that a category of worker consists of “workers performing the same work or work of equal value.” This categorization is based on factors like skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Many employers that have well-defined, neutral, objective job architecture systems plan to leverage these systems for their pay gap analysis.

To prepare for the Directive, you can begin testing and analysing category of worker groupings with Syndio’s PayEQ software.

The EU Pay Transparency Directive in Croatia will require that employers analyse unadjusted pay gaps. You then need to explain the category of worker pay gaps, which for most employers includes conducting a pay equity analysis.

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.