Who publishes, when, and on which channels

A company with 120 employees and a €4,200,000 payroll learns in April that it should have published its index before 1 March. It believed the duty applied only to large employers. The penalty risked can reach €42,000 a year. Before reading on: from what headcount does the duty apply, and since when?

Fifty employees, and nothing more

Article L1142-8 of the Labour Code lays down the duty from a threshold, with no further size condition beyond it: in companies with at least fifty employees, the employer publishes each year the indicators on pay gaps between women and men — a company reaching fifty employees has three years for its first index.

The text adds the second half of the duty, which many overlook: the actions implemented to remove those gaps must be published too. The index is therefore not a bare set of figures, it comes with what the company does about them.

Before 1 March, every year

Publication is annual and its deadline does not move: each year, by 1 March at the latest. It covers a reference period of twelve consecutive months, chosen by the employer and preceding the year of publication — often the completed calendar year, which leaves two months to gather the payroll data and compute the indicators.

That window is shorter than it looks. The data needed come from the whole year's payroll, and consolidating them assumes that job categories and age bands have been kept up to date throughout it — groundwork that cannot be improvised in February.

A company discovering the deadline in January therefore has two problems, not one. It must compute in haste, and on data whose structure was never prepared for that computation: the two compound, and the second cannot be caught up.

What the index measures, and what it does not

The index compares situations, it does not judge policies. A company may post a high score without having taken a single action, simply because its employment structure produces few gaps measurable on the criteria retained.

The reverse holds too. A company committed for years may score poorly because one of its indicators, bearing on a small headcount, swings from one year to the next for reasons unrelated to its pay policy.

Understanding that limit does not weaken the tool, it sharpens its use. The index serves to open a conversation about observed gaps, not to award a clean bill of health — which is why the text attaches the actions taken to it.

It follows that a low score is a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict on the employer. Treating it as an accusation tends to produce defensive publication and nothing else; treating it as a diagnosis is what makes the exercise worth the effort it costs.

Three channels, three audiences

The overall score is declared on the Égapro platform, and it is made public on the website of the ministry responsible for labour: article L1142-8 provides for that expressly, by derogation from the ordinary rules on disclosing public data.

On the company's own website, publication is not limited to the overall score: the index and the results obtained on each indicator must appear there, visibly and legibly. Failing a website, the information is brought to employees' notice by any means: having no site exempts a company from nothing at all.

Those figures do not vanish once posted. They must stay consultable at least until the following year's results are published, which makes a year-on-year comparison possible for anyone who looks for it.

The detail of the indicators has two institutional recipients besides. It is made available to the works council in the economic, social and environmental database, and the whole is transmitted to the services of the minister responsible for labour through Égapro.

• Declare the score and the indicators on the Égapro platform.
• Publish the index AND the results of each indicator, visibly and legibly, on the company website.
• Leave them consultable there at least until the following year's results are published.
• Failing a website, inform employees by any means.
• Make the detail of the indicators available to the works council in the economic, social and environmental database.

The order of those five steps matters little, their completeness a great deal. A company declaring on the platform but posting nothing on its own site has not met the duty: the channels do not substitute for one another.