As of November 1, 2024, employers with 1,000+ employees in British Columbia (BC) (approximately 33% of BC’s workforce) will be required to submit pay transparency reports to comply with new obligations under the Pay Transparency Act and related regulations (the Act).
Employers with 300+ employees in BC will be required to report by November 1, 2025, and employers with 50+ employees in BC will be required to report by November 1, 2026.
Since our last update, the provincial government has introduced an online reporting tool and, on June 1, published its first annual Pay Transparency Report, as well as other materials to guide employers completing their reports.
BC Pay Transparency Report: Key takeaways
- BC’s Pay Transparency Unit is tasked with supporting employers to comply with the Act and communicating with employers on their responsibilities under the Act. The Director of Pay Transparency is responsible for supporting employer compliance and receiving reports of employer non-compliance.
- The Ministry of Finance reported receiving over 500 inquiries over the past year, 61 of which reported employer non-compliance with the Act. Of those 61 reports, 54 related to job posting requirements, six related to employer reprisal and one related to pay history. Nine employers received reminder letters from the Director of Pay Transparency reminding them of their obligations with respect to job postings.
- According to the job-posting website Indeed, the job-posting requirements under the Act have resulted in a significant increase in wage information available. 49% of postings on the Canada-wide website included pay details as of February 2024; however, job postings in BC featuring pay details have now increased to 76%.
- The three biggest gender pay gaps existed in the following sectors: agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting; professional, scientific, and technical services; and manufacturing. In the arts, entertainment and recreation centre, women earned more than men.
- Racialized workers were paid less than their non-racialized counterparts: racialized men were paid 16% less than non-racialized men, and racialized women were paid 13% than non-racialized women. Racialized women were paid a whopping 29% less than non-racialized men.
Employer reporting obligations
Collecting gender information
To fulfil the reporting requirements, employers must collect information from employees by asking them to voluntarily self-identify in the following gender categories: man, woman, non-binary and unknown. Non-binary is a notable feature of the reporting requirements, as other jurisdictions typically only show pay gaps between men and women. Any employees choosing not to provide their gender information are to be marked as unknown. Employees must be specifically notified that the disclosure of information is voluntary.
Employers should gather employee information in accordance with BC’s Gender and Sex Data Standard to engage employees in an inclusive, safe and respectful way, and can refer to the Guidelines to the Gender and Sex Data Standard for additional assistance in using the standard. The standard supports a safe and inclusive approach in collecting gender and sex information.
Gender information is personal information and employers must ensure that the information (along with any other personal information) is collected, used and disclosed in accordance with applicable privacy legislation. This includes ensuring that employees have been given proper notice of why gender information is being collected (i.e., for the purpose of preparing a pay transparency report) and then limiting the use of the information to the stated purpose.
The gender information does not need to be collected annually – employers must make reasonable efforts to collect the required information from their employees when preparing their first pay transparency report. Additionally, employers must make reasonable efforts to collect gender information when a new employee is onboarded. Employers must also provide employees with the opportunity, at least annually, to provide gender pay information or to update or change any information previously provided.
Preparing the report
The Pay Transparency Regulation prescribes the information required in the pay transparency report, including information about the business and gender-based differences in the mean and median statistics for hourly rate of pay, overtime pay, overtime hours and bonus pay of employees. Employers may choose whether to report on the most recently completed financial year of the business or the calendar year immediately preceding the year in which the pay transparency report is prepared.
The pay transparency report must include the following information, and must do so, to the extent practicable, in this order:
- Name of organization and mailing address;
- Applicable North American Industry Classification 2022 sector code;
- Dates on which the reporting period began and ended;
- The number of employees in British Columbia as of January 1 in the year the report is prepared, reported as within one of the following ranges:
- 50 to 299 employees
- 300 to 999 employees
- 1000 or more employees;
- The gender category that is being compared with (i.e., men);
- The results of the pay gap calculations, including the differences between the hourly rate of pay, amount of overtime pay, number of overtime hours, and amount of bonus pay; and
- Information about the percentage of employees in specified segments (i.e., pay quartiles).
Importantly, employers are prohibited from including any information that relates to a gender category in which there are fewer than 10 employees.
Employers can use the online reporting tool to generate their pay transparency report. This tool provides a sample spreadsheet to input the necessary information, including each employee’s gender code, hours worked, pay, special salary, overtime hours worked, overtime pay and bonus pay. The tool will make the calculations to duly demonstrate pay gaps, rank employee groups in segments and generate the report. See here for further guidance on using the tool.
All 2023 reporting Crown corporation employers used the tool but took different approaches in collecting gender information. Those differences are reflected in their respective reports, which are available here, and demonstrate that most employers continue to have gender pay gaps.
Continuing obligations
Following the preparation of the first report, reports must be prepared annually by November 1.
Employers must publish completed and current reports on their publicly accessible website, or, if there is no public website, make copies of the report available to their employees at the workplace or to any member of the public on request.
As noted above, employers must also ensure that employees can withdraw their voluntary consent or change/correct their gender information. For those employers completing reports on behalf of Indigenous peoples, special considerations and obligations of consultation may apply.
Please contact the authors, Eleni Kassaris, Victoria Merritt and Rachel Au, or any member of our Employment and Labour group in Vancouver with any questions on this topic.
