In this Coffee Talk Special, Henrike von Platen speaks with Margrét Vilborg Bjarnadóttir, Associate Professor of Management Science and Statistics at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, whose work includes data-driven research on pay equity. The discussion focuses on internal pay transparency under the EU Pay Transparency Directive and the governance requirements that arise when employees exercise their rights to information.
The exchange centers on two elements of the Directive that increase internal transparency obligations. One concerns employees’ access to information about the criteria used to determine pay, pay levels, and pay progression. The other concerns the right to receive information about the average pay of women and men within categories of workers performing the same work or work of equal value. Together, these provisions shift internal pay transparency from a general principle to an operational requirement that organizations must be prepared to handle in a structured and credible way.
A central point in the conversation is that compliance does not start with answering requests. It starts earlier, with the underlying pay system. If an organization cannot clearly explain why employees are paid what they are paid, which elements shape pay decisions, and how those elements relate to the organization’s own culture and structure, then later communication will remain weak regardless of how well the response process is designed. In that sense, internal transparency depends not only on data availability, but on the coherence and explainability of the pay architecture itself.
The discussion also points to the difference between technical calculation and organizational communication. Companies may complete pay gap analyses and still find that managers are not equipped to explain the results in a way that employees understand and trust. One example discussed is a company that supplemented its analytical work with a broad multilingual FAQ, video explanations, manager scripts, and role-play training. It also created a secure central channel for employee requests in order to reduce errors, improve traceability, and manage the balance between transparency and privacy across jurisdictions with different disclosure constraints.
This example is relevant because it treats employees’ information rights as a governance process rather than a one-off communication task. The emphasis is not only on producing answers, but on ensuring that answers are consistent, traceable, compliant, and adapted to local legal conditions. Monitoring implementation through indicators such as response times and employee satisfaction is described as one way to assess whether the process is functioning as intended and whether communication quality is improving over time.
Another substantive issue raised in the conversation is proportional preparation. Experience with earlier national legislation, including in Germany, shows that some organizations invested heavily in elaborate response structures without first assessing the likely volume of employee requests. The exchange highlights the need to anticipate demand realistically and to align the level of standardization and automation with that expected volume. This is presented as a practical governance question: over-preparation and under-preparation are both forms of weak implementation if they are disconnected from the actual operational need.
The conversation further underlines that meaningful and compliant responses require clear ownership. Organizations need to determine which functions are responsible, whether within HR, legal, IT, or a cross-functional structure that combines those perspectives. Managers also remain a critical part of the implementation environment, because they are often the first point of contact for employee questions. Training therefore matters not as an isolated communication exercise, but as part of the control framework through which internal pay transparency is delivered.
Across the exchange, internal pay transparency is described not as an isolated disclosure exercise, but as a test of whether a company’s pay system, governance structure, and communication practices are aligned well enough to withstand scrutiny. Where that alignment exists, employee requests become a manageable part of pay governance rather than a destabilizing event.