Ben Oyelaran· HR Business Partner, Vantage Telecom
Asked in Pay Equity & Transparency ·
I lead rewards for a German industrial manufacturer, about 3,100 employees across four plants plus a small sales office in Austria. Our first gap report will be on 2026 data, which means the year we are measuring is nearly over and we are still arguing about sequence.
We have three workstreams competing for the same two analysts: the right-to-information process for employees, pay ranges in recruitment, and the category-level gap reporting itself. The works council wants the information right first. Our counsel says the reporting data is the long pole.
For those further along, what did you build first, and what did you regret leaving until later?
5 helpful · 6 insightful · 4 replies · 210 views · 1 following
Accepted answer· by Henrik Keller
What we regretted leaving late was the categories of workers. Everything else hangs off them: the report is by category, the information right is by category, and the 5% trigger is tested by category. We built the data pipeline first and then had to rerun it twice when the groupings changed. So my order would be: agree the equal-value categories with the works council, then the pay component mapping, then the reporting run. Recruitment changes can go in parallel because they need almost none of the same people. The request process came last for us and took about a month, most of it deciding who answers and in what format.
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Benefits Analyst, Aurora Hospitality
Reporting data first, without question. We are 5,400 people in Germany and Poland and it took us seven months just to get every allowance and benefit in kind mapped to a pay component that could be reported. The information-request process is a form, a mailbox and a service level. The data is an excavation.
HR Business Partner, Beacon Retail Group
I would push back slightly. The recruitment piece is the one that is visible to the outside world from day one, and it was the cheapest for us to do: a range on the advert and removing the salary history question from the application form took three weeks. Doing that first bought us credibility with the works council while the heavy data work carried on behind it.
Global Mobility Manager, Beacon Retail Group
Accepted answer
What we regretted leaving late was the categories of workers. Everything else hangs off them: the report is by category, the information right is by category, and the 5% trigger is tested by category. We built the data pipeline first and then had to rerun it twice when the groupings changed.
So my order would be: agree the equal-value categories with the works council, then the pay component mapping, then the reporting run. Recruitment changes can go in parallel because they need almost none of the same people. The request process came last for us and took about a month, most of it deciding who answers and in what format.
HR Business Partner, Vantage Telecom
