What is changing in job classification this year?
The core of job classification is not changing this year: work is still compared on the basis of skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and these four criteria have been in the rules from the beginning. What is shifting is that the transposition deadline has now passed and member states are developing their national implementation further this year — which means it is becoming increasingly concrete for employers how the classification into categories of equal work must be recorded and used, rather than an abstract requirement that still "lies ahead".
Particularly for those for whom this matters: mainly for employers who currently classify jobs based on department, seniority or a generic title such as "office worker", without that classification being traceable back to objective, gender-neutral criteria. As long as there was no reporting obligation, that remained without direct consequence. Now that national legislation is taking shape, the classification becomes the foundation on which everything else — from the salary range in job postings to the gender pay gap report — rests.
Why job classification is now becoming tangible
Job classification was part of the whole from the first text of the rules, but functioned for a long time as something in the background: something employers knew had to be done, without any concrete test attached to it. That changes because the other parts of the rules are now actually becoming active. The information right of employees calls for an answer based on a category, not on an individual comparison. The reporting obligation from one hundred employees calculates per category, not per job title. Without a classification that holds up, the basis on which both rest is missing.
What remains the same
The four criteria — skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions — have not been adjusted and are not expected to be, because they form the core of what makes "equal work" objectively testable. The principle that the classification must be gender-neutral is also not open to debate. What remains, then, is the standard; what is shifting is the extent to which employers actually have to be able to demonstrate that standard.
What specifically is shifting this year
This year it is becoming clearer in several member states how the classification must be recorded: not as an internal note lying somewhere, but as a document that aligns with what reporting and the information right will later require. In practice, this means that a classification that exists only in someone's head, or that is recorded without clear linking between job and criteria, becomes more vulnerable as the other obligations become active. So it is not a new rule that has been added, but an existing rule that becomes less discretionary as the rest of the system starts to revolve around it.
Moreover, it is becoming more visible that the classification is not separate from the reporting obligation. Employers who are already growing towards one hundred employees notice that a classification that is only drawn up at the time of the first report leaves little time to gather supporting evidence. Those who get the classification in order earlier do not have to reconstruct that support under time pressure.
For those for whom this becomes relevant this year
It primarily affects employers who are growing towards the reporting threshold and do not yet have a classification system that goes beyond an organizational chart. It also affects HR managers who already have classifications, but cannot demonstrate on which criteria they are based — something that only becomes apparent once an employee submits an information request or a category in the report needs to be substantiated. And it affects companies operating in multiple EU countries, because the national implementation of the classification can differ per country, even though the four underlying criteria are the same.
What this means for a specific organization depends on the sector, the number of functions and the country in which it operates — that is not a question that can be answered in general terms. In the knowledge base per topic is explained what the criteria entail and where that can be found in the official text, and with a few short questions you get an indication of where your organization currently stands. Anyone who wants to know where that indication comes from, can read that back on the page that explains the source of the information. For the actual implementation of a classification that can support the report and the right to information, on the page with the rates of the classification module explains what that entails.
Anyone who wants to know whether the job classification is asking something of their own organization this year, can start with the free quick-scan or browse through the knowledge base — both without an account and without obligation.