Corporate structures

If your organisation is part of a group of related entities, you may need to report as a corporate group. This page explains how WGEA defines corporate groups and what this means for your reporting obligations.

A corporate group is made up of a controlling corporation (parent company) and one or more subsidiary organisations.

• The controlling corporation is usually the parent company.
• The subsidiaries are the other companies or entities it owns or controls.

You are considered a corporate group for WGEA reporting if:

• there are 100 or more employees across the whole group, and
• the parent and subsidiaries are related bodies corporate under the Corporations Act 2001.

For private sector employers, these corporate structures include privately owned and publicly listed organisations, such as:

• registered higher education providers
• a natural person, or a body or association (whether incorporated or not)
• sole traders
• partnerships
• proprietary limited (Pty Ltd) companies
• trusts
• publicly owned or listed companies
• not-for-profit organisations.

A corporate group becomes a Relevant Employer when the combined employee count across all entities is 100 or more. 

• In this case, all employing entities within the group are required to register and report to WGEA, regardless of their individual size.
• When registering to report with WGEA, employers need to include parent company information in the corporate group’s organisational structure, even if the parent company does not directly employ staff. 

How employee counts in corporate groups work

• When counting employees for WGEA’s purposes, a parent company is considered to employ the Australian employees of its subsidiaries.
• If the corporate group is a relevant employer, the parent company and all employing subsidiaries (entities) within that corporate group must be registered with WGEA regardless of their individual employee count.
  • If a subsidiary has its own ABN and 100 or more employees, it is a Relevant Employer both:
    • as part of the corporate group, and
    • in its own right.

If the combined total number of employees across the corporate group (parent organisation and its subsidiaries) falls below 80, you may no longer meet the definition of a relevant employer. In this case:

• You may no longer be required to report to WGEA.
• You must notify WGEA of the change in your employee count.

For further information, visit Who needs to report? 

Following the lodgement of your Gender Equality Report, some documents can only be generated for subsidiaries that qualify as Relevant Employers. For information about reports and documents available for corporate groups, refer to Document generation.

For information about how being a corporate group might affect lodgement, refer to:

• Lodging your report as a corporate group
• Submission groups 

A joint venture is a business arrangement where two or more companies share ownership and control of a separate entity.

The companies associated with joint ventures often have requirements to lodge reports under the Act.

For example, Company X is a joint venture, and Company A and Company B each own 50 percent. If Company A and Company B each have an employee count of 100 or more, then they are both considered relevant employers under the Act.

In this example, if Company X has 100 or more employees, it:

• is a relevant employer, and
• reports as a standalone entity, separate from its owners (Company A and B).

However, if one company (e.g. Company A) has more control than the other (Company B), then Company X may be considered a subsidiary of Company A.

See Submission groups for more information on how being a joint venture might affect lodgement.

There are three options for corporate groups to lodge their gender equality report.

Corporate groups and joint ventures often have multiple entities that need to lodge reports to WGEA each year. To simplify reporting, these entities can be grouped into one or more submission groups.

What is a submission group?

A submission group allows entities within the same corporate structure to report together if they:

• belong to the same organisation, and
• have the same or similar gender equality policies, strategies and actions.  

A corporate group or joint venture can choose to:

• report as a single submission for the entire group, or
• create multiple submission groups if different parts of the group meet the criteria separately.

Note: when a corporate group registers for the first time, all recorded entities are automatically placed into one submission.

Managing submission groups

• Employers can contact WGEA via email or lodge a support request to update their submission groups.
• The parent company is ultimately responsible for ensuring all required submissions are compliant.
  • If any subsidiary is non-compliant, the parent company will also be considered non-compliant.

What to consider before creating a submission group with more than one ABN

Corporate group employers intending to report more than one entity (ABN) within a submission should consider the following.

• Access and visibility:
  • Authorised contacts for a submission group can view and access employer and contact records for all ABNs in that group. Employers control who is authorised to log in to and access the WGEA Portal.
  • For groups that intend to report across multiple submissions, contacts will need RAM authorisation for an ABN within each submission.
  • To access all submissions across a corporate group with one login credential, contacts should seek authorisation for the parent company ABN.
• Compliance implications:
  • Parent companies will be considered non-compliant if a subsidiary fails to meet any compliance requirement relating to lodging their annual Gender Equality Report. This is separate to compliance requirements that specifically apply to Designated Relevant Employers (DREs, which are organisations that directly employ 500 or more employees).
  • If DREs fail to meet the additional requirements relating to Gender Equality Standards and Gender Equality Targets, they will be considered non-compliant – but this will not affect the compliance status of other entities in the organisational structure.
• Policies must align:
  • Entities in the submission group must have the same or similar gender equality policies, strategies and actions, as each submission group will answer one Employer Questionnaire.
  • You can use multiple submission groups to group different subsidiaries with the same or similar gender equality policies, strategies and actions.
• Data submission:
  • You will need to complete a separate Workforce Management Statistics file for each ABN in the submission group.
  • For the Workplace Profile, you can either group all employees in a consolidated file or upload a separate file for each ABN in the submission group. For simplicity, WGEA recommends uploading one consolidated file containing all employees from all employing entities in the submission group.
• If the group includes Designated Relevant Employers (organisations that directly employ 500 or more employees):
  • DREs are required to select and meet 3 gender equality targets. There are two kinds of targets: numeric and action. Action targets relate to new entitlements or specific elements of gender equality policies. Corporate group employers intending to report more than one ABN in a submission need to carefully consider any action targets before selecting:
    • If a DRE sets an action target that is not implemented consistently across all entities (including non‑DREs) in the group, the DRE will need to submit its own Gender Equality Report in future years because its policies would no longer be considered ‘the same or similar’ to the rest of the group (see ‘Policies must align’, above).

Ensure that all subsidiaries that employ staff are included in the submission(s) to WGEA.

Questionnaire

• Responses must cover all ABNs in the submission accurately.
• Where a conflict exists in gender equality policies, strategies and actions, employers must list the minimum available to all employees covered in the submission.
• Each Questionnaire section contains a free-text response that can be used to provide additional context as to how it was answered.
• For further information, refer to Employer Questionnaire.

Workforce Management Statistics

• Complete one file per employing ABN in the submission group.
• If a group file is uploaded against one ABN, the data will be taken to relate only to that specific ABN.
• Important: The section will not be complete until each employing ABN has a file uploaded.
• For further information, refer to Workforce Management Statistics.

Workplace Profile

• You can choose to include employees together in a consolidated file(s) or upload a separate file for each ABN in the submission group.
• For further information, refer to Workplace profile.

You must let WGEA know if your group changes. This includes:

• mergers or demergers
• a new controlling corporation or ABN
• a business being sold or closed
• a change in group reporting approach (e.g. from group to separate).

If your organisation has changed:

• Update your structure in the WGEA Portal.
• If needed, contact WGEA for support at support@wgea.gov.au