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B10 – Workforce – Remuneration, collective bargaining and training

🗂️ VSME Basic Module – Social metrics, page 10-11

  1. The undertaking shall disclose:

(a) whether the employees receive pay that is equal or above applicable minimum wage for the country it reports in, determined directly by the national minimum wage law or through a collective bargaining agreement;

(b) the percentage gap in pay between its female and male employees. The undertaking may omit this disclosure when its headcount is below 150 employees noting that this threshold will be reduced to 100 employees from 7 June 2031;

(c) the percentage of employees covered by collective bargaining agreements; and

(d) the average number of annual training hours per employee, broken down by gender.

🗂️ VSME Basic Module Guidance – Social Metrics, page 40-41

Guidance on remuneration: minimum wage

  1. ‘Minimum wage’ refers to the minimum compensation of employment per hour or another unit of time. Depending on the country, the minimum wage might be set directly by law or through collective bargaining agreements. The undertaking shall refer to the applicable minimum wage for the country it reports on.

  2. For the lowest pay category, excluding interns and apprentices, minimum wage serves as the foundation for calculating entry-level wage. Therefore, entry-level wage includes pay equal to minimum wage as well as any additional fixed payments guaranteed to employees in that category.

Guidance on remuneration: percentage gap between female and male employees

  1. The metric for the percentage gap between female and male employees addresses the principle of gender equality, which stipulates equal pay for equal work. The pay gap is defined as the difference of average pay levels between female and male employees expressed as the percentage of the average pay level of male employees.

  2. In order to compute this metric, all employees shall be included in the calculation. In addition, there should be two separate average pay calculations for female and male employees. See the formula below:

[(𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠 − 𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠) / 𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑦 𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠] 𝑥 100

  1. Depending on the undertaking’s remuneration policies, gross pay refers to all of the following elements:

(a) base salary, which is the sum of guaranteed, short-term, non-variable cash compensation;

(b) benefits in cash, which constitute the sum of the base salary and cash allowances, bonuses, commissions, cash profit-sharing and other forms of variable cash payments;

(c) benefits in kind such as cars, private health insurance, life insurance and wellness programs; and

(d) direct remuneration, which is the sum of benefits in cash, benefits in kind and the total fair value of all annual long-term incentives.

  1. The gross pay is the sum of all the applicable elements listed above.

  2. The average gross hourly pay is the weekly/annual gross pay divided by the average hours worked per week/year.

Example

  1. Company A has X male employees and Y female employees in total. Male employees’ gross hourly pay is €15 and female employees’ gross hourly pay is €13.

  2. The average gross hourly pay level of male employees is the sum of all their gross hourly payments divided by the total number of male employees. The average gross hourly pay level of female employees is the sum of all their gross hourly payments divided by the total number of female employees.

  3. The formula used to calculate the percentage pay gap between male and female employees is

[15 −13 /15 ] 𝑥 100 = 13.3%

Guidance on collective bargaining coverage

  1. The employees covered by collective bargaining agreements are those individuals to whom the undertaking is obliged to apply the agreement. If an employee is covered by more than one collective bargaining agreement, it only needs to be counted once. If none of the employees are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the percentage is zero.

  2. The percentage of employees covered by collective bargaining agreements is calculated by using the following formula.

[𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 / 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠] 𝑥 100

  1. The information required by this disclosure requirement may be reported as coverage rates if the collective bargaining coverage is between 0-19%, 20-39%, 40-59%, 60-79% or 80-100%.

  2. This requirement is not aimed at obtaining the percentage of employees represented by a works council or belonging to trade unions, which can be different. The percentage of employees covered by collective bargaining agreements can be higher than the percentage of unionised employees when the collective bargaining agreements apply to both union and non-union members.