Step by Step: How to make pay transparency a part of everyday life

We invite webinar on March 10, 2026where we share how salary transparency can become a part of everyday life at HR with a focus on simple setup and minimal administration.

Pay transparency is not just about new requirements, but about bringing greater clarity and fairness in pay. In Denmark, the wage gap between men and women currently stands at around 14%. With the forthcoming EU directive, companies will have to be able to document and explain differences in pay, and in practice this will mean that the gap will be down to 5%.

This raises a natural question for many in HR: How do we approach this without making everyday life more difficult?

The answer lies in structure. When jobs, levels and pay are linked, pay transparency becomes not an additional reporting requirement, but a manageable part of everyday life. In this guide, we take a step-by-step look at how you can work with salary transparency in practice and how we can help you create an overview and act on time.

Step 1: Create an overview of employees and positions

The first and most important step is to get an overview. Who is employed, in what roles, and how are the positions related?

Pay transparency requires employees to be compared on a factual basis. This means that positions should be grouped into job families and tiers so that it becomes clear which roles can be compared in terms of pay.

Mindkey brings together positions, job levels, and employees in one place. This makes it possible to work systematically with job structure even if you do not already have a fixed model. Many companies start simple and expand the structure over time.

Step 2: Analyze salary data and identify differences

Once the structure is in place, the next step will be to look at salary data. Here it is not about handing out salaries, but about creating insight.

By analyzing salary across comparable positions, you can get answers to:

• Whether there are wage differences within the same job category
• Whether the differences can be explained matter-of-factly
• Whether there are things that need to be adjusted now

In Mindkey, salary data is linked directly to jobs and roles, making analysis simpler and less manual. Instead of pulling data from multiple systems, HR can work with payroll insights and documentation in the same place.

Step 3: Establish objective and gender-neutral criteria

Pay transparency is very much about being able to explain why pay is set the way it does. Therefore, it is important to have clear, objective and gender-neutral criteria for pay.

This can be, for example, experience, responsibility, skills or achievements. What matters is not what criteria you choose, but that they are clear, uniform and applied consistently.

In Mindkey, salary ranges and salary ranges can be directly linked to jobs and levels. This makes it easier to work in a structured way with pay policy and at the same time document how the criteria are applied in practice, e.g. in hiring and salary adjustments.

Step 4: Customize the recruitment processes

The directive also imposes recruitment requirements. Among other things, employers are no longer allowed to ask about the candidate's previous salary, and salary frameworks must be made clearer.

Here it is important that the recruitment process is linked to the internal job and salary structure. With pay spreads already defined per role, it becomes easier to communicate pay clearly and consistently - both internally and externally.

With Mindkey as a common reference, HR and managers can start from the same structure, creating coherence between recruitment and the existing organization.

Review contracts and policies

Pay transparency also means employees have the right to talk openly about pay. Therefore, contracts and internal policies should be reviewed so that any confidentiality clauses on pay are removed or adjusted.

Although this is not new in the legislation, the focus on this area will increase as the Directive is implemented. Here it is a good idea to be at the forefront.

Pay transparency doesn't have to be a hassle

Salary transparency first becomes onerous if it is handled as a separate compliance project. When structure, salary and documentation are linked in everyday life, transparency becomes a natural part of HR work.

In Mindkey, in close cooperation with customers, business partners and professional experts, we have developed a solution with exactly this purpose: to salary transparency simple, usable and tightly coupled to salary reporting.

The earlier the work begins, the easier it will be for you.

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