Fair-pay governance starts before employment. Article 5 requires employers to give applicants information about the role’s initial pay or range in a way that supports informed and transparent negotiation. It also prohibits questions about current or previous pay and requires gender-neutral vacancy titles and non-discriminatory recruitment.
Article 5 defines the required outcome while allowing employers to choose an operating model that delivers it consistently.
What Article 5 requires
Directive requirements
Provide applicants with initial-pay information. Applicants must receive information about the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, and, where applicable, the relevant collective-agreement provisions. The information must be provided in a manner ensuring informed and transparent negotiation on pay, such as in a published vacancy notice, prior to the job interview, or otherwise. [Directive, Article 5(1)]
Pay-history questions are prohibited. Employers must not ask applicants about pay in their current or previous employment relationships. [Directive, Article 5(2)]
Use gender-neutral recruitment. Vacancy notices and job titles must be gender-neutral, and recruitment processes must be led in a non-discriminatory manner so that the right to equal pay is not undermined. [Directive, Article 5(3)]
Building objective, gender-neutral pay information
Article 5 connects the disclosed initial pay or range to objective, gender-neutral criteria. The Directive’s broader equal-value framework says structures used to compare the value of work must exclude direct or indirect sex discrimination and must include relevant factors comprising skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Soft skills must not be undervalued. [Directive, Article 4(4)]
Operational recommendations — not express Article 5 requirements
- Define the role, level and decision owner before recruitment opens.
- Record the pay range and the factors that determine positioning within it.
- Test criteria for inconsistent impact or reliance on unsupported discretion.
- Put pay information in the vacancy notice where practical; if another channel is used, make its timing and ownership explicit.
- Remove current-pay and previous-pay questions from forms, scripts, vendors and background-check instructions.
- Train recruiters and hiring managers to explain the range without requesting pay history.
- Review planned offers against the approved criteria and comparable internal decisions.
These steps support consistent delivery. Market benchmarking, a particular band architecture, a minimum/midpoint/maximum model and a prescribed documentation format are operational choices rather than express Article 5 requirements.
Cross-functional ownership
Recruitment should own applicant communications and scripts. Compensation should own the approved range and criteria. HR operations should remove pay-history fields. Legal or compliance should review the control design. Business leaders should understand where discretion is permitted and how it is recorded.
Directive framework
Employer readiness checklist
Confirm that every open role has approved initial-pay information; the delivery method ensures informed and transparent negotiation on pay; vacancy titles and templates are gender-neutral; pay-history questions are removed; and offer decisions can be checked against the approved criteria.