Webinar Recording

Communicating Pay Equity - Before, during and after your pay audit

The ability to communicate pay-equity insights clearly and confidently is becoming essential for every organisasjon. As expectations for transparency rise, HR, leaders and advisors must translate complex lønnsdata into messages employees can understand, trust and act on.

🎥 Watch the 30-minute recording of our webinar with Chris Giebe Bjurulf, PhD (Talent Manager, People Insights & Tech, Mentimeter) and Sadie Percell (Head of Professional Services, Pihr) to learn how effective communication can:

• Empower stakeholders to engage with pay-equity findings

• Increase trust and understanding across the organisation

• Strengthen your internal or advisory role through clear, data-driven narratives

• Support long-term progress by making pay equity both transparent and actionable

This session shows how thoughtful communication, combined with the right tools, can turn insights into meaningful change.

This session is designed for HR professionals who are looking to increase their knowledge abut pay audit and effective pay transparency.

Key Questions & Answers from the Session

1. With the EU Pay Transparency Directive coming, how often should we communicate pay audit results?

A minimum of once per year is required legally, but both sources emphasize that transparency should be ongoing. To drive engagement, culture change, and accountability, results should be communicated more frequently, such as before engagement surveys, kick-offs, or retros, and ideally supported by year-round visibility through dashboards showing gender pay gaps and gender distribution. Pay equity must be a continuous conversation, not an annual event.

2. How do we get line managers onboard? Even with clear policies, transparency fails if managers can’t explain pay decisions confidently.

Managers play a central role in salary decisions and communication, so they must understand the full compensation process, their own responsibilities within it, and the reasoning behind pay outcomes. They need training, tools, and confidence to communicate consistently and empathetically. Without proper guidance, managers default to blaming HR/Finance or creating their own interpretations, which undermines transparency. Alignment, accountability, and structured support are essential.

3. How can we prepare our communication now, even if we’re not fully ready for the directive yet?

Begin by aligning leadership on the core principles that guide pay decisions. This shared foundation enables consistent messaging and clarity about what the organization stands for. Communicate early and keep employees informed throughout the journey. People don’t expect identical pay, but they do expect consistent logic. Sharing principles, context, and planned actions builds trust even before full readiness or compliance is achieved.

4. How do you communicate pay audit results if you have big gaps?

Significant gaps can feel uncomfortable to communicate, but transparency is still essential. Focus not only on the outcomes but also on the root causes and the concrete actions being taken. Employees can process difficult information when they understand the why and trust the plan for improvement. Distinguish between gender-neutral explanations and gaps that require correction, and communicate your accountability and next steps clearly.

5. Any tips for keeping communication consistent when different managers explain pay decisions differently?

Consistency requires a common framework, shared language, and dedicated manager training. Role-playing salary conversations, standardizing the data managers use, and equipping them with clear guidance prevents misinterpretation or selective use of information. Tools such as Pihr support this alignment by providing standardized reports and explanations so every employee receives the same rationale regardless of manager.

6. How can we make sure the pay audit results we communicate are actually accurate? We want to avoid sharing something internally that might later change.

Accuracy relies on a strong foundation: a robust job evaluation methodology, a well-defined job architecture, and reliable systems. While roles and structures naturally evolve, a solid underlying framework reduces instability in results. Technical solutions, like Pihr, help stabilize data, remove manual errors, ensure methodological consistency, and provide clear visualizations, making communication of results more dependable even as circumstances change.