6 actions to take to check your gender pay gap

WGEA will publish average and median gender pay gaps for base salaries and total remuneration. This information is available in your Executive Summary.

• Your median gender pay gap is different to your average (mean) gender pay gap.

Learn more about what will be published here - Publishing employer gender pay gaps | WGEA

WGEA calculates your gender pay gaps based on the data provided in the Workplace Profile of your annual Gender Equality Report. 

The Workplace Profile was compiled with employees employed on a specific day in the 12-month reporting period (1 April to 31 March of the following year). This is known as the snapshot date. Calculations that use a different snapshot date may have a different result.

WGEA’s GPG calculation includes the remuneration of:

• all full-time, part-time and casual employees employed in Australia by your organisation on the snapshot date (regardless of whether they are Australian citizens or not),
• employees who have worked overseas for less than six months in the reporting period, 
• employees on parental leave (paid or unpaid) or on extended leave, 
• casual or seasonal workers, 
• trainees, apprentices and graduates, and/or
• equity partners who receive part of their earnings as a salary. 

It does not include the remuneration of:

• Overseas reporting managers (OSM),
• employees you reported as non-binary, and/or
• any employee given '0' for their income in your submission.

Total remuneration is an employee’s base salary amount plus any additional benefits whether payable directly or indirectly, whether in cash or in a form other than cash.

This includes:

• wages or salary payments,
• superannuation,
• bonuses (or performance pay),
• higher duties allowances and temporary performance loadings,
• allowances,
• back pay or workers compensation payments,
• commissions, penalty rates, over-time, or shift loadings,
• over-award or over-agreement payments,
• share allocations,
• cashed-out annual or long service leave payments,
• non-monetary benefits,
• employer-funded parental leave, and
• other payments whether in cash or in a form other than cash.

The total amount of these payments is before tax and before any salary sacrificed items have been taken out.

Earnings of part-time or casual workers must be annualised and calculated for full-time equivalent earnings. This means taking their actual earnings and converting these to the amount they would have earnt if they worked full-time hours and for the full year. 

Earnings to be annualised include:

• wages or salary payments,
• superannuation,
• bonuses (or performance pay),
• higher duties allowances and temporary performance loadings,
• allowances, and
• commissions, penalty rates, over-time, or shift loadings.

For employees covered by an Australian ABN who are paid in a foreign currency, payments are converted to Australian dollars using the exchange rate on the snapshot date.

For corporate groups, the following gender pay gaps will be published:

• The gender pay gaps of any ABN that reports 80 or more employees - average and median (for base salary and total remuneration).
• The gender pay gap of the corporate group as a whole - average and median (for base salary and total remuneration).

The gender pay gap is the difference between women’s and men’s average or median total remuneration, expressed as a percentage of men’s total remuneration.

• The average income is the middle value calculated as the sum of all values divided by the total number of values.
• The median income is the number that falls into the middle when everyone’s wages are lined up from smallest to largest. 

The steps below to calculate a gender pay gap can be used for either the total remuneration or base salary amounts reported for your employees.

To calculate your own average total remuneration gender pay gap:

• gather the total remuneration for each employee (in an organisation, or across an entire group) on the snapshot date you submitted to WGEA
• calculate the average total remuneration of men
• calculate the average total remuneration of women
• Do the following calculation:

Gender pay gap =

100 X (Median total remuneration of men – Median total remuneration of women) / Median total remuneration of men

To calculate your own median total remuneration gender pay gap:

• gather the total remuneration for each employee (in an organisation, or across an entire group) on the snapshot date you submitted to WGEA
• calculate the median total remuneration of men
• calculate the median total remuneration of women
• Do the following calculation:

Gender pay gap =

100 X (Median total remuneration of men – Median total remuneration of women) / Median total remuneration of men

If you still have questions about the gender pay gap calculated by WGEA, please reach out to us by emailing support@wgea.gov.au.