11. Finishing a submission

To finish the Gender Equality Report the Accountable Authority or CEO or equivalent must review and approve the documents generated from the WGEA Portal after each section has been completed without recording any unresolved data quality issues. When approved, the declarations and consent section must be completed on the submission homepage in the Portal, after which the report can be submitted.

Once you have completed the core components of the program, you must generate your full data reports and download a Submission Approval form.

Each section must be 'completed' with no outstanding data anomalies before you can successfully generate your documents for review/approval. They are generated from your submission home page (below the sections of your report that have been completed). Your documents will generate in the 'Data and Insights' tab of the portal under 'Reports' after 5-10 minutes. The reports can take longer to generate in high-traffic periods.

The following documents generate as PDFs:

• Questionnaire – Public Report: Lists the mandatory questions and answers provided in the questionnaire section.
• Questionnaire – Confidential: Lists the mandatory and voluntary questions and answers provided in this section of the submission.
• Workforce Management Statistics – Public Report: Details the employee movements in a data table that was reported in this section of the submission.
• Workplace Profile – Public Report: Information on the composition of the employee base reported in this section of the submission.
• Workplace Profile – Confidential: Adds to the public version by including salary and remuneration averages for female and male employees used to calculate gender pay gaps.
• Reporting Overview: Summary of the entire submission, contains a gender pay gap figure calculated from the submitted data.

The Reporting Overview is a visual overview of your submission; this document is not required to be taken for review/approval and cannot be used in lieu of the other documents that generate for this step. We recommend that you take all reporting documents to your leadership for review and approval.

Your organisation’s CEO or Department/Agency Head (or equivalent) must review the documents generated and approve and sign the Submission Approval form in order for you to finalise your submission in the WGEA Portal. 

• The submission approval form for your internal use can be downloaded from the home page of this guide or the 'steps to complete a report' section.
• You do not need to upload a signed copy of the form, approval is instead signalled by checking the declaration and consents at the end of your submission.

Once any errors have been addressed and your CEO, Department/Agency Head or equivalent has approved the data in your submission, you will need to approve and confirm the final declarations and consents to enable the final lodgement of your data.

You can click on the 'submit' button to officially lodge your Gender Equality Report.

The Workplace Gender Equality (Minimum Standards) Instrument 2014 sets the minimum standard for the areas listed below in the reporting questionnaire. The minimum standard is:

• An extra compliance requirement for relevant employers with 500 or more employees in their corporate structure
• The least an employer must do to show commitment to workplace gender equality and diversity.

If you are a relevant employer with 500 or more employees, you must have a formal policy or strategy in at least one of the following areas of the Questionnaire.

• If you do not meet the minimum standard by having a policy or strategy in place in one of these areas, you have two reporting periods to improve before you risk becoming non-compliant.