Corporate structures

A corporate structure defines how an organisation is legally set up and operates, including how its different entities relate to one another. The structure of an organisation affects how it registers for WGEA reporting and prepares and lodges workplace gender equality data to WGEA under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (the Act).

A corporate group is a corporate structure where a group of legal entities (subsidiaries) is controlled by a parent entity.

Under the Act, a corporate group is a Relevant Employer when the employee count across all entities is 100 or more employees. All entities associated with that corporate group must then be registered with WGEA regardless of their individual entity size.

If an entity within a corporate group (subsidiary) has its own ABN and has an employee count of 100 or more, it is considered a relevant employer as part of the corporate group, but also in its own right.

Important: certain documents are only generated for individual ABNs within a corporate group that qualify as a relevant employer. Please refer to the Report Generation and the Documents & CEO Sign-Off pages for more information on how being a corporate group might affect the reports and documents employers receive.

Note: If the corporate group’s total employee count falls below 80 for 6 or more months in a reporting period, the corporate group is no longer required to report.

Also see Lodging your report as a corporate group for more information on how being a corporate group might affect lodgement.

Also see Submission groups for more information on how being a corporate group might affect lodgement.

A joint venture is a corporate structure, or business arrangement, where two or more companies share ownership and control of a separate entity.

The companies associated with joint ventures often have requirements to lodge reports under the Act.

For example, Company X is a joint venture, and Company A and Company B each own 50 percent. If their employee count is 100 or more, then both A and B are considered relevant employers under the Act.

In this example, if Company X has 100 or more employees, it:

• is a relevant employer; and
• reports as a standalone entity, separate from its owners (Company A and B).

However, if one company (e.g. Company A) has more control than the other (Company B), then Company X may be considered a subsidiary of Company A.

See Submission groups for more information on how being a joint venture might affect lodgement.

A partnership is a corporate structure where two or more people share income or losses. Partnerships can take different forms, including:

• General partnerships
• Limited partnerships
• Incorporated limited partnerships

Identification

Additional registration requirements apply when registering, confirming details, or lodging a report when a partnership is a relevant employer.

Partnerships must identify themselves correctly.

• The registration form will automatically recognise relevant employers as a partnership where the entity type linked to the ABN on the Australian Business Register is a partnership.
• Alternatively, relevant employers can manually select ‘Yes’ to the question:
  ‘Is this organisation a partnership and/or are there partners in its governing body?’
• Where a relevant employer is already registered but needs to update its entity type to a partnership, contact WGEA support at support@wgea.gov.au for assistance.

Why this matters:

By identifying as a partnership, relevant employers will be required to complete the partnership version of the Workforce Management Statistics. This version includes the composition of equity and non-equity managers.

See Submitting data (partnerships) for more information on how being a joint venture might affect lodgement.

Corporate groups and joint ventures often have multiple entities that need to lodge reports to WGEA each year. To simplify reporting, these entities can be grouped into one or more submission groups.

A submission group allows entities within the same corporate structure to enrol in the same reporting program if they are part of the same organisation and have similar workplace policies and strategies.  A corporate group or joint venture can choose to:

• Report as a single submission for the entire group, or
• Create multiple submission groups if different parts of the group meet the criteria.

When a corporate group registers for the first time, all recorded entities are automatically placed into one submission.

Managing submission groups

• Employers can contact WGEA via email or support request to update their submission groups.
• The parent company is ultimately responsible for ensuring all required submissions are compliant.
  • If any subsidiary is non-compliant, the parent company will also be considered non-compliant.

Ensure that all subsidiaries that employ staff are included in the submission(s) to WGEA.

Each subsidiary is benchmarked on an individual primary industry activity.
 

Questionnaire

• Responses must cover all ABNs in the submission accurately.
• Where a conflict exists in policies and strategies employers must list the minimum available to all employees covered in the submission.
• Each questionnaire section contains a free text response that can be used to provide additional context as to how it was answered.

Workforce Management Statistics

• Complete one file per employing ABN in the submission group.
• The section will not be complete until each employing ABN has a file uploaded.
• If a group file is uploaded against one ABN, the data will be taken to be pertaining only to that specific ABN.

Workplace Profile

• Choose to include employees together in consolidated file(s) or upload a separate file for each ABN in the submission group.
• Employees for each employing ABN must appear in the uploaded file(s).
• The section will not be complete until each ABN in the submission group has reported employees.

Overview of where partners are included in this report:

*Partners with an employment contract are reported as per their employed role, not in reference to their partnership role or any fees or payments associated with that partnership role or agreement.

• Managing Partners who are CEO/equivalents must have remuneration data reported as if they held an employment contract.

When an organisation has been identified as a partnership:

• Answer an additional question in the Workforce Management Statistics sheet relating to the number of equity and non-equity partners
• Include employed partners in the workplace profile data as they are employees, categorise and report payments that only relate to their employed position.

If a partnership structure is covered under the Act, it must report on:

• the number and gender composition of any partners sitting on governing bodies in the questionnaire.
• the number and gender composition of full-equity partners and non-equity partners who are on partnership terms and agreements (no salary) in the workforce statistics
• full- or part-salaried partners in the workplace profile (as their salaried position) and the managing partner, as CEO, in the workplace profile