Complying with the Swedish Lönakartläggning
This article provides information on legally required pay equity reporting in Sweden. It gives an overview of which employers need to take action, what the deliverables are, how to get started, and how to use the PayAnalytics software to help meet the local requirements.
In Sweden, gender pay gap reporting is governed by the Discrimination Act (2008:567), which mandates that all employers conduct annual pay surveys to assess and address gender-based pay disparities on an annual basis.
In this article we will break down the Swedish Lönekartläggning and help you to answer four questions:
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Please keep in mind that the articles in the PayAnalytics Help Center do not offer legal advice.
1. Who does it apply to?
The requirements apply to both the public and private sectors, and mandates that employers with 10 or more employees conduct annual pay surveys to assess gender-based pay disparities.
Employers with 25 or more employees face additional obligations, such as preparing written action plans, implementing measures to address pay gaps, and reporting on their progress. These requirements apply across both sectors, ensuring that both public and private organizations are held accountable for gender pay equality.
2. What is the requirement?
The requirement under the Lönekartläggning is to ensure that men and women receive equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. Specifically, employers must:
analyze equal work (or substantially similar work) to identify any compensation differences between genders.
analyze equally valued work, comparing jobs that are predominantly female to other jobs (non-female predominant) of equal value and identifying any differences in compensation.
analyze predominantly female jobs and comparing them to lower-valued jobs that are not predominantly female but receive higher compensation.
3. How does PayAnalytics help you to meet the requirement?
PayAnalytics thoroughly equips users to create reports for the Lönekartläggning. The Value based comparison feature can generate analyses that meet the requirements in Sweden. Using the Swedish preset, the elements required in the reporting are generated in a report within the system and can be downloaded into a Word or PDF document.
If you have already performed a job evaluation for all your jobs, this data needs to be included in a column in the uploaded employee dataset. Our Job Evaluation feature (for more information, see Job evaluation) is a system feature where you can establish the value of your jobs, either using our built-in job evaluation templates and wizards or upload your pre-existing job evaluation framework.
Preparing your data
Note that a dataset containing at least the following data needs to be imported prior to generating the report:
Unique employee ID (mandatory for all datasets),
Gender which for reporting purposes constitutes either male or female,
Total salary data,
Job role or job group,
Job value points. If the Job Evaluation feature in PayAnalytics is utilized, the job value points will be added to the dataset within the system.
Once a dataset has been uploaded with the above-mentioned datapoints, the dataset can be reviewed in the Employee Overview page following the Reviewing your data article to catch any potential data errors.
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If you're using the Job Evaluation feature in the system, the value points are merged with the uploaded dataset on the Dataset Configuration page. To begin, navigate to the Job Evaluation section, as shown on the illustration below:
First, select the specific Job Evaluation scheme you wish to use within the system. Then, choose the column from your dataset that corresponds to the job roles in the Job Evaluation. After making your selections, the system will provide information on which values from the selected column are present in the Job Evaluation and which are not, and vice versa.
Once the dataset is fully uploaded and the value points have been added, you are ready to generate the Sweden Lönekartläggning report within PayAnalytics.
Generating the report:
The first step is to navigate to Value-based Comparison in the left navigation bar, which will direct you to the feature's Settings page. Start by selecting the Job Groups and Job Value points from your dataset, then choose a preset. Several presets are available to match the legal requirements of different countries, with Sweden being one of them. Once Sweden is selected, the relevant aggregates, thresholds, and display sections will be pre-filled, and you’ll be ready to generate the report based on Sweden’s legal requirements for analyzing equal work and work of equal value.
Once you click Save, you will be directed to the report within the system, where you can view and analyze the chapters included in the Lönekartläggning shown on the following illustration:
Report chapters
For example, in the first graph/chapter, you'll see an overview of the job groups, where you can analyze the job roles and compare the median salary to other roles with similar value points. The graph also provides information on whether the job roles are predominantly male or female-dominated, as illustrated on the following picture:
Group overview graph
In the upper right corner, you have the option to download the full report in either Word or PDF format. Please note that the language of the report will match the system language. For example, if the system is set to Swedish, the report will be generated in Swedish.
4. Which steps should we take next?
Once the report is generated, here are some actions you might need to take after generating the report:
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Review and Analyze the results. Carefully review the findings to ensure that all relevant data is accurate and that the analysis is correct. Look for any potential pay gaps or discrepancies between male and female-dominated roles and assess if the reasons for those gaps are justified.
You can use the system to analyze whether the differences can be explained by any factor other than gender, by running a regression analysis, you can build a compensation model, to see which variables contribute to the compensation difference and by how much. For more information on how to create a compensation model, see Creating a compensation model.
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Develop an Action Plan (if necessary). If the report reveals significant pay gaps, you may need to develop an action plan. This could include measures such as salary adjustments, changes in recruitment processes, or other initiatives aimed at addressing gender pay inequality. In Sweden, employers are required to take action within three years to close any identified pay gaps, and the action plan must be monitored.
With PayAnalytics, you can receive raise suggestions to help close or reduce pay gaps. For more information on how to get suggested remediation actions, see Getting suggested remediation actions. Additionally, the Compensation Assistant ensures that pay gaps don't re-emerge as new employees are hired or existing employees are promoted, for more information, see Using the Compensation assistant.
Conclusion and next steps
Understanding workforce diversity is key to understanding why a raw (unadjusted) pay gap might exist. You may want to check out our Workforce Analytics report and how it helps to understand your organization’s changing workforce. To learn more, see Workforce analytics.
If you would like further support around the Sweden Lönekartläggning, please don't hesitate to reach out for assistance through the Help Center support channel or reach out to our pay equity consultants at clientservicespe@beqom.com.