Staff count for the Equality Plan
21 December 2021.
Magda Bargalló
CALCULATION OF THE NUMBER OF STAFF FOR THE ELABORATION OF THE EQUALITY PLAN
07 March 2022: Companies with 50 or more employees: How to obtain the headcount calculation?
As you know, as of 7 March 2022, if your company has between 50 and 100 employees, you must have an approved equality plan.
It may seem easy to determine whether or not we have 50 employees... until we have to do it.
We give you the 5 keys to get the total count of your workforce right and determine whether or not you are obliged to negotiate, draw up and implement the equality plan:
- When should we calculate the number of employees in my company?
Each year, you must do this at 2 specific times: 30 June and 31 December.
If at either time of the year your workforce reaches 50 employees, you are automatically obliged to negotiate, draw up and implement the Equality Plan.
In other words, as soon as your company's workforce reaches 50 employees, even if it is not maintained over time, your company is obliged to implement the Equality Plan.
- How is staffing computed?
The computation shall be carried out on all the company's employees. Whatever the form of employment contract, including persons with permanent contracts, with fixed-term contracts and persons with stand-by contracts.
In any case, each person with a part-time contract shall be counted, regardless of the number of working hours, as an additional person.
Fixed-term contracts, whatever their modality, which, having been in force in the company during the previous 6 months, have been terminated at the time of the calculation, shall be taken into account. In this case, each 100 days worked or fraction thereof shall be counted as one additional worker.
- Do the members of a cooperative count as staff for the purposes of the obligation to negotiate the equality plan?
No, since the relationship between cooperative societies and their worker-members is not an employment relationship but a corporate one.
However, all the cross-cutting regulations that protect the prohibition of direct and indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex apply to female and male worker-members. From Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution to the articles of Organic Law 3/2007, of 22 March. In which the specific assumptions of equal treatment and opportunities between women and men are established.
They are also subject to the measures that may be included in their specific regulations, including regional regulations, to promote effective and real equality between women and men in the case of cooperative societies.
- Do trainees or other persons linked to the company through non-employment relationships count as staff for the purposes of the obligation to negotiate the equality plan?
No. Only employees are counted as employees.
- Should temporary agency workers be counted as part of the user undertaking's workforce?
Yes. For the calculation of the number of persons giving rise to the obligation to draw up an equality plan, the total workforce of the company shall be taken into account, including persons seconded under secondment contracts.
Once you detect that your workforce reaches 50 or more people, and whenever this happens, the obligation to negotiate, draw up and implement the equality plan arises.
This obligation will continue even if the number of employees in your company falls below fifty, once the special negotiating body has been set up and until the end of the period of validity of the plan agreed therein, or for four years, as the case may be.
Remember that, even if we do not have a workforce of 50 employees, our company must draw up and implement an equality plan:
a). As set out in the applicable collective agreement
b). The labour authority has agreed in a sanctioning procedure to replace accessory sanctions by the preparation and implementation of such a plan.
For further information contact 93 872 69 44