The One Thing I’d Change About the Pay Transparency Directive

There’s a lot to like about the EU Pay Transparency Directive. I genuinely believe it will move the needle on something the market has failed to fix on its own: paying people equally when they perform the same work. But there’s one piece I keep getting stuck on, and the more I work with companies preparing for June 2026, the more it bothers me.

Job descriptions.

The Directive leans heavily on them. They sit underneath job evaluation, which sits underneath the comparison of work of equal value, which sits underneath the entire reporting framework. Pull one thread and a lot unravels. So let’s talk about why this worries me, and what I think you should actually do about it.

Why are job descriptions a problem?

I run a small experiment during my keynotes. I ask the audience: “Who has a job description”. Obviously, every hand goes up. Then I ask when they last read it. The honest answer, almost always, is “when I got the job.” Then my final question: do you still do what it says? Most people laugh, but the answer is always “No” or “I don’t know”.

That gap between the job description and the actual job is the norm. Companies are in constant motion, roles change, scope expands, projects pull people in a different direction and managers reorganize teams faster than HR can update the org chart. A job description written in 2022 describing a role someone took in 2023 and is doing differently in 2026 is not a reliable foundation for anything, let alone a legally significant pay equity analysis.

But isn’t that an HR hygiene problem rather than a Directive problem?

I used to think so. I’ve said that in projects: clean up your job architecture and refresh your descriptions to get your house in order. But the underlying issue is that the world of work has moved on from the assumption that job descriptions can keep up at all. As evidenced by the responses of my audience members.

We’re moving toward skills-based organizations. People are hired for what they can do, deployed to tackle problems rather than hold steady positions. Workers are increasingly assessed on contribution rather than role definition. But the Directive still asks us to compare “work of equal value” using four criteria — skills, effort, responsibility, working conditions — that most companies capture through static documents written for a different era of work. The Directive isn’t wrong to require comparison. It’s the approach we use to do the comparing that’s the problem.

What’s the risk if companies just keep doing what they’ve always done?

I see two real risks. The first is legal. If a pay gap analysis rests on job descriptions that don’t reflect the actual work, an employee challenging their pay can credibly argue that the foundation of the comparison was flawed. That’s not theoretical exposure, it’s the kind of detail lawyers will go after first.

The second risk is reputational. When you publish your reports in 2027, you tell employees the methodology is sound, and then someone inside the organization points out that the descriptions used to evaluate their roles bears no resemblance to what people actually do today, you have no way to shift that story in your favor.

So should we throw out job descriptions entirely?

No, and I want to be careful here, because we need something pragmatic. What I’d suggest instead is treating the job description as a thin anchor rather than a complete picture. Keep it as short and simple as you can. Strip it down to what’s genuinely durable about the role: its purpose, the level of responsibility, the core capabilities required, the working conditions.

Then layer the dynamic part on top: a living skills profile, jointly maintained by the manager and the employee, that captures what the person is actually doing this year and what skills the role currently demands. This isn’t a radical idea. It’s basically what skills-based talent platforms have been pushing for the last decade. The novelty is using it as the base for pay equity work, not just for internal mobility or learning.

How does that hold up under the Directive’s “work of equal value” test?

Better than you might think. The Directive asks for objective, gender-neutral criteria covering skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions. A thin document handles responsibility and working conditions well: those are the durable bits. A living skills profile handles skills and effort more accurately than any traditional description ever could, because it reflects the work as it actually is, not as it was written up at hire.

The trick is making sure the skills profile is maintained with the same rigor as the formal description used to be. That means a defined cadence, I’d suggest at least annually, ideally tied to the performance cycle, and clear ownership. If it lives in a system nobody touches, you’ve replaced one stale document with another.

What about job evaluation? Doesn’t that still need fixed inputs?

It does, and this is where I’d push back gently on the all-or-nothing framing some skills-first advocates use. Job evaluation methodologies still need consistent inputs to produce consistent outputs. You can’t run a dynamic skills profile through a points-factor system designed for stable role definitions and expect coherent grades.

What you can do is evaluate at the base level and use the skills profile to validate, not replace, the evaluation. If a role is graded at level 12 but the skills profile shows the person is consistently operating at level 14 work, that’s a signal: either the role definition needs an update, the person needs a promotion, or the pay needs an adjustment. The Directive’s emphasis on equal value actually makes this kind of signal more useful, not less.

Where do we start?

Start by auditing a sample: pick ten or twenty roles across different functions and levels. Pull the formal job description, then ask the manager and the employee (separately!) what the role actually involves today. If the three versions agree, you have a foundation. If they don’t (and I’d bet most won’t) you have your starting point for the work. Use the approach I described above to design thin, static base job description and combine with a living skills profile. And remember, this is not about completely gutting your job architecture and starting from scratch. This is about finding a pragmatic way to deal with parts of the Directive that might not be completely aligned with how we work.