Denmark Gender Pay Gap Reporting: What You Need to Know

To find the full text, refer to the Danish Equal Pay Act (Ligelønsloven) and Denmark’s Consolidation Act on Equal Pay to Men and Women.

Employers may be fined for failure to comply with their reporting requirements and enterprises (legal persons) may be held criminally liable under the provisions of Part 5 of the Danish Criminal Code.

The gender pay gap report in Denmark should include all employees in the company who are paid according to the time worked, including regular employees, managers, and students. Global Pay Reports customers with detailed guidance on which employees are included.

Denmark uses DISCO-08, a six-digit five-level classification used for the classification and aggregation of information about work functions from various statistical surveys. The classification is a revised version of the 1988 classification (DISCO-88).

DISCO-08 is a tool for organizing jobs or positions into clearly defined groups, according to the tasks performed in the job or position. The use of DISCO-08 makes it possible to compare people with the same job function, regardless of the formal title and education of the employee.

DISCO-08 is the official Danish version of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08), which is prepared by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The pay gap requirement in Denmark focuses primarily on gender. The reporting requirements and metrics are designed to assess and address the gender pay gaps within organizations.  This will also be the case with the EU Pay Transparency Directive.

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

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

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

The law in Denmark analyses 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.