An employee has asked in writing for her comparators' average pay. What do we send back?

The small group problem usually comes from defining the group as her team rather than her category of equal-value work. We had a group of six. Applying the category from our job evaluation, which our reporting uses anyway, gave 41 people across product, programme and clinical roles, and the privacy issue went away.

It is also the grouping you will report on, and our works council had already agreed it. If the category is still tiny after that, our counsel's guidance was to route the answer through the employee representatives rather than refuse it. Ask yours about that route.

Whatever you send, prepare the manager first.

Do the analysis for her individually before you reply. In two of our five requests so far the employee was right, and it was much better to send the information together with a correction than to send the averages and wait for the claim. One adjustment was 8%.

Thank you. Using the reporting category gives a group of 34, which solves the identification problem and is consistent with what we will publish. Her own pay sits 5.1% below the male average for that category, so we are reviewing that before the reply goes, and I am meeting her manager tomorrow.