In December 2018, the Swiss parliament amended the Equality Act to require that organizations with more than 100 employees conduct an analysis of gender pay equity, verified by an external third-party and communicated to their employees.
The law comes into effect on July 1, 2020 and requires that organizations conduct the analysis by June 30, 2021; have it externally verified by an independent body one year after the analysis and at the latest or by June 30, 2022; and communicate the results to employees and shareholders by June 30, 2023.
The law states that companies are required to apply a method of analysis that is scientific and in accordance with the law. The analysis should be carried out by legal entity every four years in the case that an unexplained gender pay gap is revealed or once if the analysis does not reveal any pay gaps.
The EDGE Unexplained Gender Pay Gap Methodology is a quantitative approach to analyzing gender pay equity that isolates the impact of gender on pay for employees with equivalent personal and professional characteristics. The scientific nature and legal compliance of the EDGE Methodology was validated by an external third party and allows Swiss-based organizations to comply with the law.
The complete EDGE Methodology to measure if there is any unexplained gender pay gap can be found in English here and in French here.
The full validation letters from the following universities can be found here:
- University of Zürich
- University Bern
- University College London
- University St.Gallen
- University of Geneva
Contact us to learn more about the EDGE Unexplained Gender Pay Gap Methodology. For more information on the legislation, please refer to the Swiss Gender Equality Act.