B.C. Pay Transparency Reports Are Due November 1, 2026: What Employers Need to Know
If your organization has 50 or more employees in British Columbia, there is a new reporting deadline to pay attention to this fall.
B.C.’s pay transparency reporting requirement expands in 2026. Employers that meet the threshold must prepare a report by November 1, 2026 and make it publicly available. For many mid-sized organizations, this will be their first time putting together a report of this kind.
The report draws on payroll information and employees’ voluntarily disclosed gender information. That means the work may involve HR, payroll, finance and whoever manages your website.
Here’s what employers should know and what to start doing now.
Does your organization need to prepare a report?
Under B.C.’s Pay Transparency Act, the reporting threshold for 2026 is 50 or more employees on January 1, 2026. The province describes the requirement as applying to employers with 50 or more employees in B.C.
Start by confirming your employee count on that date. If your organization operates in more than one province, has related companies, or is federally regulated, check how the requirement applies to your particular employer before deciding you are in or out of scope.
The November reporting deadline is separate from B.C.’s existing rules for publicly advertised jobs. Provincially regulated employers already have to include the expected wage or salary, or a range, in publicly advertised job opportunities. Reporting is an additional obligation for employers that meet the applicable size threshold.
What does the report cover?
The report compares pay information across employee gender categories. The required information includes differences in hourly pay, overtime pay, overtime hours and bonus pay, as well as the distribution of employees across pay segments. It also includes basic information about the employer and the reporting period.
Employers can choose one of two 12-month reporting periods:
Their most recently completed financial year; or
The calendar year immediately before the year the report is prepared.
For a report prepared in 2026, that second option is the 2025 calendar year. Choose your reporting period before you start pulling data so HR and payroll are working from the same dates.
What if employees haven’t provided their gender information?
In their first reporting year, employers must make reasonable efforts to collect the prescribed gender category information from employees. Employees must be told that providing it is voluntary. The reporting categories are Man, Woman, Non-binary and Unknown. The Unknown category also covers employees who do not wish to specify a category or for whom the employer does not have that information.
Employers should handle this information carefully and explain why they are asking for it. Do not assume an employee’s gender to fill a gap in your records.
The reporting rules also limit the publication of information about gender categories with fewer than 10 employees. That privacy protection matters, particularly for smaller organizations where a published figure might otherwise be easy to connect to an individual.
What should employers do before November 1?
If this is your first report, we would work through it in this order:
1. Confirm whether you meet the threshold. Check your January 1, 2026 employee count and confirm which employing entity is responsible for the report.
2. Choose the reporting period. Decide whether you will use your most recently completed financial year or the 2025 calendar year.
3. Check your payroll data. Identify where ordinary pay, paid hours, overtime pay, overtime hours, bonuses and commissions are recorded. These may sit in different systems or require cleanup before they can be used consistently.
4. Plan how you will request gender information. Explain the purpose to employees, make clear that disclosure is voluntary, and decide how the information will be collected and protected.
5. Prepare and review the report. B.C. provides an online Pay Transparency Reporting Tool to help employers create the report. Review the underlying data and the generated report before it is published.
6. Make it publicly available. The Act requires employers to publish a completed report on a publicly accessible website as soon as practicable. If the employer does not have one, the Act sets out another way to make the report available to employees and the public. Aim to have the preparation and publication process completed by the November 1 deadline.
A report can raise useful questions
The immediate task is to meet the reporting requirement. But the process may also show you where your compensation practices need a closer look.
For example, you may find that job titles have been used inconsistently, bonus decisions are poorly documented, or different teams record overtime in different ways. A reported pay difference does not, by itself, explain why it exists. It gives you a reason to examine the data and understand what is happening.
That is useful work beyond this year’s deadline. Cleaner payroll records, clearer compensation decisions and a repeatable reporting process will make next year easier.
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Need help preparing?
If you are trying to determine whether the requirement applies to you, organize your HR and payroll information, or work through what your report reveals, A&A can help.
This article provides general information as of September 2026 and is not legal advice. Employers should review the current B.C. requirements and obtain advice about their specific circumstances where needed.
