An employee is requesting information about their own pay and the average pay of colleagues. What must we provide, and by when?

Act No. 76/2026 Coll. on equal pay for men and women gave employees a new right: to ask the employer how they themselves are paid and what men and women in comparable work earn on average. The first requests are reaching HR departments, which often have no procedure for them. An incorrect or late reply may make itself felt in an equal pay dispute: where the employer breaches its obligations under Section 6, it must as a rule prove in such a dispute that it did not discriminate (Section 12).

What exactly the employee receives

An employee has the right, on the basis of a request, to obtain from the employer written information a) on the level of their pay, b) on the average level of pay broken down by sex in the category of employees performing the same work or work of equal value as the employee; this does not apply where the level of pay of another specific employee could be derived from that information.

— Section 6(1) of Act No. 76/2026 Coll. (unofficial English translation)

The statute defines the level of pay as pay for a calendar year and the corresponding hourly pay (Section 2(1)(b)). Pay includes not only basic wages but also complementary components, that is, other monetary and non-monetary benefits; we examine what falls within them in bonuses and benefits in equal pay. The average for a category of employees presupposes that you have compiled categories according to the criteria of the pay structure (Section 2(1)(h)); how to do so is explained in employee categories and work of equal value.

Under the transitional provision, you provide information on average pay levels under point (b) for the first time for 2027 (Section 18(2)). An employee may request information on their own pay level already now.

Time limits and form

• Two months from the submission of the request for the written information (Section 6(2)).
• 30 days for a further, reasoned explanation where the employee objects that the information provided is inaccurate or incomplete (Section 6(3)).
• An employee may also make a request through the employee representatives or the Slovak National Centre for Human Rights (Section 6(4)); the time limits under Section 6(2) and (3) apply to such a request as well.
• Once a year you must inform all employees of this right and of the procedure for exercising it (Section 6(5)).
• To a person with a disability you provide the information in a format accessible to them (Section 7).

Where the category is small

If the pay of a particular colleague could be derived from the average, typically in a category of two or three people, you do not provide the employee with the average. For such cases the statute envisages another route: the employee representatives, the labour inspectorate and the Slovak National Centre for Human Rights have access to such information, and the representatives may advise the employee without disclosing data about colleagues to them (Section 10(3)). In your reply, therefore, state why you are not providing the average, and provide the information on the employee’s own pay in every case. Data processed for this purpose may be used only for the exercise of the right to equal pay (Section 10(2)).

Confidentiality

You must not prevent an employee from disclosing the amount of their own pay to another person, and contractual confidentiality clauses concerning one’s own wages are invalid (Section 6(6) and (8)). You may require confidentiality only as to the average pay levels of colleagues, and not even then where the employee is exercising the right to equal pay (Section 6(7)). A summary of the other obligations the statute introduced can be found in the article the equal pay act: what the employer should have completed.

How to prepare

Determine who receives and records requests, with the date of delivery and the deadline for a reply. Prepare a single template reply and a methodology for calculating the level of pay, so that the same question does not receive two different answers. Agree with the payroll department where the data for the categories are to be taken from, and plan the annual notification to employees. If the reply does not stand up, the employer will as a rule have to prove in a dispute that it did not discriminate, and the statute allows an exception only for a manifestly unintentional and less serious breach; more on that in the article the equal pay dispute.

We set up the procedure for employee requests, the template replies and the calculation methodology as part of our pay transparency service.