Same and similar work
Same work is the straightforward case: employees do the same job or substantially the same job. Similar work is close enough in duties, responsibilities, requirements, and context that comparison is meaningful.
Job title can help identify candidates for comparison, but it is not the test. Two people can share a title while doing materially different work, and two different titles can describe work of equal value.
Work of equal value and grading
Work of equal value is broader than same or similar work. It covers different roles that may sit in different departments, have different titles, and involve different day-to-day tasks, but which make comparable demands on the employee.
The comparison should not be based on job title, department, historic pay, or market assumptions alone. It should be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria such as:
- Skills and knowledge required for the role.
- Effort, including e.g. mental, emotional, and physical effort.
- Responsibility for e.g. people, money, risk, customers, systems, or outcomes.
- Working conditions, including e.g. pressure, hours, hazards, or difficult environments.
Work of equal value is easiest to identify when a company has a structured job architecture or grading system. A good grading system does not simply rank jobs by status, market salary, or negotiation power. It assesses the demands of the work using objective, gender-neutral criteria.
Point-factor job evaluation is commonly used as it is mostly gender-neutral
Point-factor job evaluation can support gender-neutral comparison of work of equal value. Each role is scored against defined factors such as skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions (which can be further fine-tuned). The total score is then used to group roles into different grades.
| Factor | Example sub-factors |
|---|---|
| Skill | Knowledge, qualifications, experience, problem-solving, communication |
| Effort | Concentration, workload intensity, emotional effort, physical effort |
| Responsibility | People, financial impact, risk, compliance, decision-making |
| Working conditions | Environment, time pressure, unsocial hours, exposure to conflict or hazards |
A point-factor method does not decide the pay levels. It compares the demands of the work. That is what makes it useful for identifying same work, similar work, and work of equal value.
Build employee groups
With a gender-neutral grading system, gender pay gap analysis for the individualized right to information can be assessed. The company documents their methodology to group employees doing the work of same or equal value, then calculate pay gaps inside those groups.
Start from job architecture
Use grades, levels, job families, or collective frameworks where they are current and consistently applied.
Test equal-value criteria
Check whether skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions, complexity, and decision impact are visible in the grouping logic.
Add explanation variables
Connect the group to legitimate pay drivers such as experience, performance, location, or qualifications.
Lock before calculating
Define groups and explanation fields before reviewing the gaps, so the method is not shaped around the result.
Existing architecture should not be accepted uncritically. A grade structure can reproduce bias if the factors, weighting, or calibration undervalue e.g. caring, coordination, communication, emotional labour, or other work more commonly associated with women.