All non-public sector employers with 100 or more employees are required to complete a report about their workplace profile. The report must be lodged with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) by 31 May 2013.

This will be the case even if the employer previously had a waiver for reporting requirements to the Equal Opportunity for Women Agency (the old name for the WGEA).

The report is for the year ending 31 March 2013. You can find a template for the report from here:
www.wgea.gov.au/content/reporting-2012-13-reporting-period

In the report the employer must confirm that it will meet certain notification and access requirements, namely:

  • employees will be notified as soon as reasonably practicable (e.g. by message on the staff intranet, by email to all staff or notice in the tea rooms) of the following:
    • a report about your organisation's workforce profile has been lodged with the Workplace< Gender Equality Agency in accordance with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) (include the date of lodgement)
    • how they can access the report; and
    • the fact that they submit any comments on the report internally or to the WGEA.
  • any union that has members amongst your workforce will also receive this notice, access to the report and opportunity to comment;
  • shareholders should also receive this notice, access to the report and opportunity to comment (if a public company, this can be achieved by including it in the annual report).

The notice could be along the following lines:

Workplace Gender Equality Report

On # 2013 [insert your company/business name] (the Employer) lodged with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) a report about its workforce profile in accordance with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) (the Act). You can view the report on our website [insert link] and download a copy if you wish. You may submit any comments on the report by e-mailing them to [insert e-mail address of relevant contact in your company/business]. Alternatively you can submit the comments to WGEA by completing a comments submission form and emailing it to reportcomments@wgea.gov.au.

If comments are provided to the Employer or WGEA within 28 days of the lodgement of the report, this will allow those comments to be taken into account by the Employer in providing additional information to WGEA, and by WGEA in requesting additional information to assist in assessing compliance with the Act.

You don't have to make enquiries to determine whether any of your employees are union members.

The requirements for the 2013-2014 reporting period will change quite significantly. We will provide more information about this later this year.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.