WGEA reporting: what you lodge, and what happens after

Quick summary

Who has to report

You are a relevant employer, and must lodge a gender equality report, if any of the following is true:

• you employ 100 or more people in Australia
• you expect to employ 100 or more for at least six months during the reporting period
• you have previously reported and still employ 80 or more people

Corporate groups are counted together. The threshold applies to the combined total across the parent company and every employing subsidiary, so a group of ten thirty-person entities is in scope even though no single entity is close. The parent is ultimately responsible: if a subsidiary misses a compliance requirement, the parent is treated as non-compliant.

You register with WGEA once. After that you are automatically rolled into each subsequent cycle, which is convenient but also means the obligation does not lapse quietly if the person who used to handle it leaves.

Counting your employees

This is where shift-based employers most often get the answer wrong, because the intuitive count and the statutory count are different.

Because every casual on the books counts regardless of hours worked, hospitality, retail and healthcare employers cross the line far earlier than their full-time-equivalent figure suggests. A venue group with 45 permanent staff and 70 casuals is a relevant employer. If you are unsure whether a worker is an employee at all, our ABN or employee guide covers the distinction, and employment types and hours covers the categories.

What you lodge

A gender equality report is made up of four documents:

• Employer Questionnaire — your policies, strategies and actions across the six gender equality indicators.
• Workplace Profile — the composition of your workforce by gender, occupational category and remuneration.
• Workforce Management Statistics — employee movements over the period: appointments, promotions, resignations and parental leave.
• Public Report employee data tables — the published output derived from the two data submissions above.

The Workforce Management Statistics are the part that needs a year of clean records rather than a point-in-time export. They ask what happened across the period, not what your headcount is today, so reconstructing them in May from an incomplete employment record is the single most painful part of the process.

The six gender equality indicators

The questionnaire is organised around the six indicators set by the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012:

1. gender composition of the workforce
2. gender composition of governing bodies
3. equal remuneration between women and men
4. availability and utility of flexible working arrangements, and of parental, carer's and family and domestic violence leave
5. consultation with employees on gender equality in the workplace
6. sex-based harassment and discrimination

After you lodge

This is the half most employers under-read. Lodging satisfies one requirement; the notification and access requirements are separate, and failing them makes you non-compliant even though the report itself was filed on time.

The Industry Benchmark Report arrives two to three months after the lodgement period closes, so the board obligation lands well after everyone has stopped thinking about WGEA. Diarise it at lodgement rather than waiting for the report to appear.

Gender equality targets for 500+ employers

A designated relevant employer is one that directly employs 500 or more employees. Note that this is a different test from the one that decides whether you report at all: reporting scope is measured across the corporate group, but the targets obligation attaches to a single entity's own headcount.

A designated relevant employer must select three targets from WGEA's menu of 19 — nine numeric targets and ten action targets — covering the gender pay gap, workforce and board composition, support for carers and parents, consultation, and prevention of sexual harassment. At least one of the three must be a numeric target. You then have three years to meet each target, or to demonstrate improvement against it. Private sector employers select their first three targets as part of the 2025-26 report lodged between 1 April and 31 May 2026.

Published gender pay gaps

Employer gender pay gaps are public. WGEA publishes them on its Data Explorer and in the Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report, covering thousands of individual employers and corporate groups. Your figure is derived from the remuneration data in your own Workplace Profile, so the quality of that submission determines the number that appears next to your name.

Employers can supply a link to an Employer Statement, which sits alongside the published gap and provides context. Prepare it before publication. Explaining a figure after it has been reported on is a materially worse position than having the explanation already sitting beside it.

What non-compliance costs

There are no fines. The consequences are reputational and commercial, which for most employers is worse:

• WGEA may name the employer in a report to the Minister, tabled in both Houses of Parliament
• WGEA may name the employer publicly, by electronic or other means
• WGEA may decline to issue a certificate of compliance

That third one is the sharp end. Without a current certificate of compliance you can be restricted from tendering for Commonwealth contracts and from receiving Commonwealth grants and other financial assistance. For an employer with government work, a missed reporting deadline is a revenue problem, not an administrative one.