Key points in the full Polish Pay Transparency Draft

Three weeks after Poland teasing us with a commission report, they finally release the full 19-page draft on the implementation of Pay Transparency!

Together with Adam Seoudi, we’ve put together a set of key remarks, that you need to be aware of. Later this week, our Polish partner (Łaszczuk & Partners) will be bringing an in-depth analysis and article on the draft, which will be made available directly on our Polish legislation tracker - so make sure to sign-up for the legislation tracker so you stay notified.

Going through the draft, there are a lot of details, that provide clarity for Polish employers

1. The definition of total pay remains the same and must be stated in hourly or monthly terms. However article 2(3) states that employers can exclude pay components that are equal in cash and benefits in kind that are provided to everyone equally without conditions of their use - within the category of worker group.
2. Median and Average salaries must be calculated using the male salary as the denominator.
3. Companies must conduct job evaluation to establish “work of equal value” groups, and to the degree that trade union operates at the employer the used criteria and sub-criteria must be agreed with said Trade union(s). If soft skills are required for carrying out the job, it is important these are included as criteria. This consultation process must take at least 5 days, but no more than 15 days - personally, I have a hard time seeing that being sufficient time.
4. Pay differences within a group of employees are allowed, but must be justified using objective gender-neutral criteria - such as experience and competences.
5. Employee’s will have the right get information on the criteria used to determine the pay of an employee, the pay level, and the pay increases based on objective criteria. This must be proactively disclosed for employers above 50 employees.
6. Employees will have the right to receive information on their total pay and the average total pay men and women of the group of equal work that the employee is a part of. Upon request, the employer will have 30 days to provide this information - the EU directive says 2 months. Furthermore, this can be requested by unions directly.
7. The employer must notify and inform the employees every year by March 31st latest, of the right to receive the “employee’s right to information” report.
8. Employers with 100+ employees must submit a pay gap report in line with the requirements of the EU directive. It must be submitted by the 31st of March, and will be published on the 31st May.
9. The “work of equal value” table must be submitted directly to trade unions by March 31st. If there are gaps above 5% which are not explained from objective criteria, the employer will have 6 months to take action on said gaps. Furthermore, the trade unions, labor inspectorate, employees, and the equality body can request further information on the gaps - from which the employer will have 14 days to provide detailed explanations. If the objective criteria are not accepted, the employer will have 8 months to remedy, and if that has not been done a joint pay assessment can be triggered - which means also small groups can trigger these actions.
10. There is no minimum threshold stated for the size of groups when it comes to employee-level reporting. The employer can decide if a group is so small so that disclosing salary information would lead to personal identification. If that is the case, the employee-report must be sent to  the worker representative, national labor inspectorate, or the equality body.
11. The fines will vary between PLN 3.000 - 50.000, for failing to comply with the new legislation. This can be due to lack of job evaluation, lack of reporting, having pay secrecy clauses, or failing to disclose ranges to new applicants.

The Polish authorities plan on having the legislation taking effect from June 7th 2026, with the first report covering the period of June 7th - December 31st 2026.

These are the key remarks, but note that we are currently working on an in-depth analysis with our Polish legal partner; Łaszczuk & Partners

If you are in doubt on how to get ready for pay transparency, then feel free to reach out to me - I’d be happy to give a demo of the PayGap platform where we help with everything from analysis to reporting.