Job and Role Classification: The Foundation of Pay Transparency

How do you know whether two employees perform work of equal value? And does your business have the necessary data to document this?

With the EU's pay transparency directive, it is becoming increasingly important to have a clear understanding of employees' job functions, responsibilities and organisational roles. However, for many businesses, the biggest challenge is not necessarily comparing salaries, but identifying which employees should actually be compared.

This is where workforce data can form an important part of the foundation. With a better overview of employees, job functions and organisational structures, it becomes easier to take the first steps towards a more systematic approach to job and role classification.

Pay transparency starts with understanding employees' work

When discussing pay transparency, it is natural to focus on pay differences between men and women. However, before businesses can begin comparing salaries, they need to answer one fundamental question:

This is one of the central principles of the EU's pay transparency directive. Businesses must be able to assess and compare work based on objective, gender-neutral criteria.

This means that comparing employees with the same job title is not necessarily sufficient. Two employees with different titles may perform work of equal value, while employees with the same title may have different tasks and responsibilities.

You should therefore start examining what information you already have about employees' roles and where documentation may be missing.

With Timegrip, you can bring together key workforce data to support this overview. Information about employees' organisational affiliation, working hours and registered job functions can be particularly relevant when mapping how work is organised.

This does not constitute a complete job classification in itself, but it provides a stronger data foundation for the next steps.

What is job and role classification?

Job and role classification involves creating a systematic structure for the different positions and job functions within a business.

The purpose is to identify which employees perform comparable work and how different roles should be assessed in relation to one another.

This requires you to examine several factors:

• Job tasks: What tasks does the employee perform on a daily basis?
• Responsibilities: What responsibilities are associated with the position?
• Skills: What professional qualifications and skills does the work require?
• Effort: What physical, mental or other work-related demands does the position involve?
• Working conditions: Under what conditions is the work performed?

This information should form the basis for an objective assessment of the work.

But where do you begin if your business has hundreds of employees across different departments, locations and job functions?

A natural first step is to examine the employee data you already have access to. This is where Timegrip can contribute workforce data that provides insight into how employees and working hours are organised. This information can be combined with your company's own job descriptions and competency requirements, meaning the job classification process does not have to start from scratch.

How to get started with job and role classification

Job and role classification may seem like an extensive task, but the process becomes more manageable when broken down into practical steps.

Having these classifications in place early is particularly beneficial, so you are prepared when the pay transparency directive is implemented on 1 March 2027.

1. Gain an overview of employees and organisational roles

The first step is to understand how employees are distributed across your business.

Which departments do they work in? Which job functions are they assigned to? And how are employees organised across different locations?

With workforce data, you have a stronger starting point for identifying existing employee groups and examining whether there are differences between the formal organisational structure and the job functions employees actually perform.

2. Document what employees' work involves

Once the organisational structure is in place, the next step is to describe the individual job functions.

After all, a job title does not necessarily tell the whole story.

Imagine two employees who are both employed as sales assistants. One primarily works with customer service, while the other is also responsible for ordering stock, training new colleagues and coordinating daily activities.

Although the employees share the same job title, there may be differences in their tasks and responsibilities that you need to take into account. It is therefore important to combine information about employees' organisational roles with a clear description of their actual tasks.

At this stage, it is essential to consider data such as registered job functions, working hours, organisational placement, skills, responsibilities and working conditions.

3. Group employees according to objective criteria

Once job functions have been described, you can begin defining the employee groups that will form the basis for pay comparisons.

It is important that these groups are not based solely on job titles, departments or organisational placement.

Under the pay transparency directive, comparisons must be based on the same work or work of equal value. Your business must therefore apply objective, gender-neutral criteria when assessing which job functions are comparable.

The workforce data available through Timegrip can form part of the basis for identifying and organising relevant employee groups.

However, the actual assessment of which jobs are of equal value must be carried out using your company's job evaluation methodology.

4. Connect workforce data with payroll data

Once employee groups have been defined, the next step is to link them to your company's payroll information.

This is where job and role classification becomes particularly relevant to pay transparency.

If you do not know which employees perform comparable work, it becomes difficult to carry out accurate pay analyses.

Timegrip can provide workforce data, including relevant employee information and recorded working hours, which can form part of your company's overall data foundation.

When this information is combined with payroll data from your other systems, you can begin conducting pay comparisons within the defined employee groups.

Timegrip's role in pay transparency

By taking a systematic approach to scheduling, time tracking and employee information, you can gain better control over some of the data needed for your overall pay transparency documentation.

Timegrip also offers strong integrations with payroll systems, making it easier to connect workforce data with payroll information.

This allows relevant information to be transferred between systems, reducing the amount of data handling required and minimising the risk of errors. It provides a more consistent and connected data foundation when working with pay analyses and documentation.

With Timegrip, you benefit from:

• Better organisational visibility: Gain an overview of employees across departments, locations and job functions.
• More consistent employee data: Create structure in information about working hours and organisational affiliation.
• A stronger foundation for employee groups: Use workforce data to identify and maintain the employee groups that should be included in pay comparisons.
• Strong payroll system integrations: Improve the connection between workforce data and payroll information, reducing the need for manual data transfers between systems.
• A better foundation for pay analyses: Make it easier to combine relevant employee information with payroll data, allowing your business to take a more systematic approach to investigating and documenting pay differences.

This does not mean that workforce data alone can establish whether two jobs are of equal value.

However, when employee data is structured and workforce management systems are connected with payroll systems, your business has a stronger foundation for carrying out and documenting the necessary assessments.

With Timegrip, it is therefore not just about managing schedules and working hours. It is also about creating a reliable data foundation that can support your work with pay transparency.

Job classification is not a one-off task

A company's organisational structure rarely remains unchanged. Employees change roles, take on new responsibilities or move between departments. New positions are created, while others evolve. This means that completing a job and role classification exercise once and considering the task finished is not enough.

You should establish a regular process for updating your employee groups and ensuring that they continue to reflect the work employees actually perform.

This is where the quality of your workforce data becomes important.

With Timegrip, you can continuously register and maintain relevant employee information. This can help keep your organisational data up to date when employees move between departments or their registered job functions change.

At the same time, you should establish who is responsible for reviewing job descriptions and updating employee classifications when tasks or responsibilities change. In this way, job and role classification becomes an ongoing part of your employee data management rather than a one-off exercise linked to the implementation of the pay transparency directive.

Start with the data you already have

At Timegrip, we help businesses gain a better overview of their employees through workforce management, including scheduling, time tracking and the management of relevant employee information.

This workforce data forms an important part of the foundation for working towards compliance with the pay transparency directive.

Are you unsure which employee data you already have available and how it can support your work with pay transparency? Contact us for a no-obligation discussion about how our workforce management solutions can help create a stronger data foundation for your business.