Yes, you can handle part of a compensation information request yourself: receiving it, registering it, and responding within the deadline are administrative tasks that can be handled internally with a good template. Where it becomes more difficult is when the employee asks for a comparison with colleagues doing equivalent work. Then you need a substantiated job classification to be able to answer the request, and creating that classification yourself requires more time and knowledge than answering the request.
The boundary does not lie with the request itself, but with what is needed to answer it. If you have already classified your positions based on objective, gender-neutral criteria and have the averages per category ready, handling the request is largely a matter of transferring the correct figures into a standard letter. If that classification is missing, you are essentially starting from scratch: first determine which positions are equivalent, and only then can you say anything about compensation within that category.
What a compensation information request actually entails
The right to information gives an employee the opportunity to ask for their individual compensation level and for the average compensation level, broken down by gender, of employees doing the same work or work of equal value. The latter is the crux of the difficulty: to be able to provide an average, it must be clear who falls into the same category. Without a classification that substantiates this, there is nothing to average.
The request itself does not need to be complicated. Often it comes in as a brief request from an employee or a representative, and the tone is usually informational, not conflictual. Nevertheless, the answer must be based on facts that you can substantiate if questions come up later.
The part you can handle yourself
Receiving and acknowledging a request, keeping track of the deadline within which you must respond, and recording what has been asked and answered: this is work that an HR manager or office manager can handle independently, especially with a set procedure in place. It is comparable to handling an access request under other regulations: a process with a clear start, a clear end, and a fixed set of steps in between.
Drafting the letter or email with the answer is also something you can do yourself, provided the underlying figures are already established. What you do not need to figure out yourself is the format: a standard template prevents each request from having to be worked out from scratch. In the knowledge base with explanations per obligation you will find what such a request entails exactly and which information belongs in it, so you don't start from zero.
Where doing it yourself becomes more difficult
The complexity does not lie in answering, but in substantiating. As soon as an employee asks for a comparison with equivalent work, you must be able to demonstrate which criteria were used to compare positions with each other and why those criteria are objective and gender-neutral. This is not a matter of filling in a form, but of a classification that has already been carefully made beforehand. Companies that do not yet have this classification will face this gap when they receive their first serious request.
Additionally, there is the difference between structuring and assessing. It is possible to calculate and present the averages per category yourself, or with a system. Whether a difference found is justified is a different question, and a calculation module cannot answer that question, and an HR department usually cannot without legal review. For that assessment, a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority is the appropriate contact.
Without a job classification, doing it yourself becomes riskier
The risk of handling it yourself does not lie in the process itself, but in the absence of a foundation. An answer that is drawn up without a defined classification into categories can be difficult to defend later if an employee asks further questions or if multiple requests come in succession. With a fixed classification and a fixed template, each subsequent request becomes easier than the previous one, because the underlying figures are already in place.
Those who want to know how far their own situation has progressed can check this with a few questions via the compliance check that maps out your situation. This gives an indication of what is already arranged and what is still needed before the first request arrives.
Doing it yourself with a template, or outsourcing the process
Most SME employers do well to manage the process themselves once the classification is in place: answering a request then becomes routine. Outsourcing precisely that classification, or the workflow that monitors the deadline, is for many companies the step that saves time, simply because it only needs to happen a few times a year and the knowledge does not need to be continuously available internally.
On the page showing where the information comes from shows how payria links the classification, the figures and the workflow together, without us making any judgment on the outcome. What it costs to outsource that instead of doing it yourself is clearly set out in the subscriptions and what they include.
Would you first like to see where you stand before making that choice? The free quick-scan and the knowledge base provide a first answer without an account, and from there you decide for yourself whether the handling of a request stays internal to you or not.