[Brielle Buckler]

For this dis­cus­sion, refer to this prompt from Lumen Learn­ing (copied below):

Pay eq­uity is­sues run ram­pant in the United States. Women, on av­er­age, only earn a por­tion of what a man does, and a mi­nor­ity woman could earn even less yet. Or­ga­ni­za­tions need only look in their own back­yards to see the pay gap rear­ing its ugly head—al­most every or­ga­ni­za­tion has one.

You’re an HR pro­fes­sional at an or­ga­ni­za­tion that thinks it’s pay­ing its women fairly. Still, you want to make sure. Bias and pay dis­crep­an­cies come in all shapes and sizes, and symp­toms of the pay gap could be lurk­ing in the shad­ows. So, you start doing some re­search.

Where do you look? What are your plans? On­line searches can pro­vide you with a va­ri­ety of places to look and steps to take to un­cover pay gaps at your or­ga­ni­za­tion. List two or three dif­fer­ent steps that you, as an HR pro­fes­sional, would take to en­sure that the com­pany is doing every­thing it can to en­sure pay eq­uity. Pro­vide a quick ex­pla­na­tion of each of those plans, if nec­es­sary, and share your sources. Once you’ve put to­gether your list and ex­pla­na­tion, re­view the lists of at least two other class­mates, and pro­vide them with sug­ges­tions.

———————————————————————-

In order to re­ceive full credit for this as­sign­ment, all com­po­nents of this as­sign­ment are due by 11:59pm ET on Sun­day, April 4, 2021. You should first con­tribute a thought­ful post of your own be­fore view­ing/com­ment­ing on the posts of oth­ers. Once you sub­mit your post, you must re­spond mean­ing­fully to at least two other class­mates’ threads. This as­sign­ment is worth a total of ten (10) points — 6 pos­si­ble points for your orig­i­nal post, and up to 2 points for each of the two re­sponses to your class­mates’ posts. Please ref­er­ence our Dis­cus­sion Rubric for more in­for­ma­tion.

[Jennifer Baker]

I found this to be an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion be­cause as I looked into it, my first thought (check­ing rel­e­vant salaries through tools like salary.com etc.) I found to be not at all what was dis­cussed in var­i­ous ar­ti­cles I found on con­duct­ing a pay eq­uity audit. In­stead, all the in­for­ma­tion to look at it in­ter­nal (which makes sense – set­ting com­pen­sa­tion to be fa­vor­able gen­er­ally would in­clude look­ing at peer com­pa­nies, re­gion, etc. but in this case we are look­ing at whether pay is fair be­tween peo­ple al­ready em­ployed at our com­pany).

**********

Step one is a two-piece item I think: a) iden­ti­fy­ing ex­actly what ques­tion you are ask­ing and try­ing to solve (there is a big dif­fer­ence be­tween try­ing to achieve ac­tual eq­uity and ask­ing “are our ac­tions il­le­gal”, which is a much lower bar to clear) and b) get­ting buy-in from the top-level man­age­ment. Sup­pose that you find there is in­deed a wage gap, that will take sig­nif­i­cant money to close? Is the com­pany going to step up and close that gap and take a hit in the bud­get? You def­i­nitely want to be sure the CEO and every­one on down is on the same page in this re­gard.

The sec­ond step I would take is one rec­om­mended by the first ar­ti­cle I link below, which I think can be very help­ful as you look to re­pair this sit­u­a­tion now and – im­por­tantly – going for­ward: re­search how his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent com­pen­sa­tion has been de­ter­mined. Do man­agers have a strong (and out­size) in­flu­ence on pay de­ci­sions (which could mean they push harder for make em­ploy­ees, con­sciously or not)? Are the women rou­tinely dinged for a per­cep­tion that they aren’t “team play­ers” (but it turns out that means will­ing­ness to at­tend af­ter-hours events all the time, ef­fec­tively pe­nal­iz­ing peo­ple who are pri­mary fam­ily care­tak­ers, usu­ally women?) These types of things that im­pact pay de­ci­sions are all things that will need to be ad­dressed and re­memdied if pay eq­uity will be achieved and es­tab­lished as a norm going for­ward. (Note: a few com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Red­dit, have taken the still un­usual step of out­right elim­i­nat­ing any ne­go­ti­a­tion as a way to re­move that lever for bias/dis­parate im­pact – which looks to have a pretty good track record but it not the eas­i­est change to talk peo­ple into when we are so con­di­tioned to the idea that ne­go­ti­a­tion is vital [and which it is for all com­pa­nies where this is *not* the rule]. Some more info on that is here: https://​www.​npr.​org/​2015/​04/​23/​401468571/​some-​companies-​fight-​pay-​gap-​by-​eliminating-​salary-​negotiations, https://​www.​shrm.​org/​hr-​today/​news/​hr-​magazine/​Pages/​0915-​salary-​negotiation-​bans.​aspx, and https://​www.​forbes.​com/​sites/​fin​anci​alfi​ness​e/​2018/​04/​11/​a-​powerful-​way-​to-​close-​the-​pay-​gap-​dont-​negotiate-​salaries/?​sh=154​3908​d220​9)

The third step is to ac­tu­ally col­lect the data and an­a­lyze it – in­clud­ing things like per­for­mance rat­ing in­for­ma­tion, job lo­ca­tion, over­time pay, as well as gen­der and job roles. This is an in­ten­sive process and to be hon­est, read­ing about it….I would hire an out­side firm with sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence in this if at all pos­si­ble. Un­less your or­ga­ni­za­tion is very small, there often de­velop weird mul­ti­ple ti­tles that are sim­i­lar for var­i­ous po­si­tions, while al­ter­nately the same job title can have a huge range of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties (and pay), with some em­ploy­ees doing much less in the same title than oth­ers. Sort­ing all that out and suss­ing out gen­der and other de­mo­graphic axes can be very com­pli­cated and ab­solutely should be done by some­one who knows what they are doing.

************

Some ar­ti­cles I found help­ful on this in­clude https://​hrexecutive.​com/​follow-​these-​7-​steps-​to-​an-​effective-​pay-​equity-​audit/ and https://​www.​visier.​com/​clarity/​head-​of-​diversity-​and-​inclusion-​how-​to-​pay-​equity-​analysis/. The sec­ond ar­ti­cle is par­tic­u­larly help­ful in break­ing down an ex­am­ple of the ac­tual analy­sis.

[Shane russell]

Hi Jen­nifer,

I agree with the wage gap be­tween women and men, in this world and u be­lieve, if your doing the same job you should get paid the same amount. Some men can’t even do they job and get paid more ,when a women that has more ex­pe­ri­ence and pro­vides bet­ter num­bers for the com­pany’s gets paid less. It’s not fair to women who do the bet­ter work while men who do noth­ing get the more com­pen­sate.

[Sonia Gonzalez]

Hi Jen­nifer,

I also agree with the wage gap be­tween women and men. This is true ear­lier women used to earn lesser than men be­cause girls were re­stricted by their fam­i­lies on cer­tain types of jobs or due to lesser ed­u­ca­tion qual­i­fi­ca­tion or due to fam­ily pres­sure or due to child up­bring­ing.  As a re­sult women used to have lesser ex­pe­ri­ence than men and were paid less. If they are both doing the same job then the salary should be the same.

Thank you for shar­ing.

[Teri]

Step three is very true and once ad­dressed will help out tremen­dously in all com­pa­nies.

[Shane russell]

Up­date hir­ing prac­tices

make your job de­scrip­tions gen­der neu­tral

Re­move gen­der-bi­ased terms from your job de­scrip­tion, in­clud­ing gen­der-spe­cific ref­er­ences and pro­nouns. In­stead, focus on the work-re­lated re­quire­ments and ex­pe­ri­ence. Not only will fewer can­di­dates sub­mit re­sumes, but fe­males with­out “fore­man” ex­pe­ri­ence may be of­fered lower pay due to a per­cep­tion of miss­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, even if you hire them for the job. Fe­male ap­pli­cants may well have su­per­vi­sory and man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, even in man­u­fac­tur­ing or con­struc­tion. Isn’t that what you’re re­ally after?

Re­move dis­crim­i­na­tion from your screen­ing ques­tions

Ed­u­ca­tion and in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence are two ex­am­ples. For ex­am­ple, if you have a job and screen for in­di­vid­u­als who have de­grees in eco­nom­ics or en­gi­neer­ing, you’re going to get fewer di­verse ap­pli­cants and screen out top tal­ent that can do the job. Fur­ther, if you focus on the skills needed, rather than the in­dus­try, you’ll find there are plenty of strong can­di­dates with tech­ni­cal skills, lead­er­ship skills, data an­a­lytic skills, and prob­lem-solv­ing skills that come from more di­verse back­grounds. As long as they can do the job, why should they be paid less?

Elim­i­nate prior salary ques­tions from your in­ter­views

Why? Be­cause prior salary has no bear­ing on whether a can­di­date can do the job or not. In fact, that ques­tion fur­thers gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion in pay by fa­cil­i­tat­ing wage sup­pres­sion as em­ploy­ees move from job to job. The next time you post a job, de­ter­mine the salary in ad­vance. Then, re­gard­less of whether the can­di­date you hire iden­ti­fies as male, fe­male, or is from a di­verse back­ground, offer them fair pay for doing that job. Fac­tors like race and gen­der have no bear­ing on their work.

Eval­u­ate your cul­ture

In­volve women in hir­ing de­ci­sions

If all your hir­ing man­agers and su­per­vi­sors are males, you’ll have bias that will per­pet­u­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion in hir­ing and con­tribute to pay in­equity. A way to over­come that is to bring fe­males (even if they don’t have the job title) into the in­ter­view­ing process for bal­ance. Here’s data from Har­vard on why: “When a woman was mak­ing the de­ci­sion, women were hired 50 per­cent of the time, yet when a male em­ployer was mak­ing the call, women had only a 40 per­cent chance of get­ting hired.”

Find ex­ec­u­tive spon­sor to sup­port equal pay

Ex­ec­u­tives with a legal or fi­nance back­ground make good spon­sors. At­tor­neys un­der­stand the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of pay dis­crim­i­na­tion. Fi­nance folks tend to un­der­stand the risk that a lack of di­ver­sity can cause as well as the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits an or­ga­ni­za­tion reaps when it has a work­force aligned with its client or con­sumer base.

Fits­mall­busi­ness.com- re­sources

 

[Zoila Cedeno]

Hi Shane.

I like your idea about in­volv­ing women in hir­ing de­ci­sions and mak­ing sure that you have a mixed hir­ing team so that you can re­duce the pos­si­bil­ity of bias and pay in­equity.  As far as elim­i­nat­ing salary ques­tions from the in­ter­view process, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 6, 2020, in New York em­ploy­ers are legally for­bid­den to ask a prospec­tive em­ployee re­gard­ing salary his­tory.   An em­ployer can only ask what your salary ex­pec­ta­tions are, noth­ing else.  A small step that we hope will help in this bat­tle.

[Shane russell]

<p class=”p2″></p>
Up­date hir­ing prac­tices
-Make your job de­scrip­tions gen­der neu­tral

Re­move gen­der-bi­ased terms from your job de­scrip­tion, in­clud­ing gen­der-spe­cific ref­er­ences and pro­nouns. In­stead, focus on the work-re­lated re­quire­ments and ex­pe­ri­ence. Not only will fewer can­di­dates sub­mit re­sumes, but fe­males with­out “fore­man” ex­pe­ri­ence may be of­fered lower pay due to a per­cep­tion of miss­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, even if you hire them for the job. Fe­male ap­pli­cants may well have su­per­vi­sory and man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, even in man­u­fac­tur­ing or con­struc­tion. Isn’t that what you’re re­ally after?

-Re­move dis­crim­i­na­tion from your screen­ing ques­tions

Ed­u­ca­tion and in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence are two ex­am­ples. For ex­am­ple, if you have a job and screen for in­di­vid­u­als who have de­grees in eco­nom­ics or en­gi­neer­ing, you’re going to get fewer di­verse ap­pli­cants and screen out top tal­ent that can do the job. Fur­ther, if you focus on the skills needed, rather than the in­dus­try, you’ll find there are plenty of strong can­di­dates with tech­ni­cal skills, lead­er­ship skills, data an­a­lytic skills, and prob­lem-solv­ing skills that come from more di­verse back­grounds. As long as they can do the job, why should they be paid less?

-Elim­i­nate prior salary ques­tions from your in­ter­views

Why? Be­cause prior salary has no bear­ing on whether a can­di­date can do the job or not. In fact, that ques­tion fur­thers gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion in pay by fa­cil­i­tat­ing wage sup­pres­sion as em­ploy­ees move from job to job. The next time you post a job, de­ter­mine the salary in ad­vance. Then, re­gard­less of whether the can­di­date you hire iden­ti­fies as male, fe­male, or is from a di­verse back­ground, offer them fair pay for doing that job. Fac­tors like race and gen­der have no bear­ing on their work.

Eval­u­ate your cul­ture
-In­volve women in hir­ing de­ci­sions

If all your hir­ing man­agers and su­per­vi­sors are males, you’ll have bias that will per­pet­u­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion in hir­ing and con­tribute to pay in­equity. A way to over­come that is to bring fe­males (even if they don’t have the job title) into the in­ter­view­ing process for bal­ance. Here’s data from Har­vard on why: “When a woman was mak­ing the de­ci­sion, women were hired 50 per­cent of the time, yet when a male em­ployer was mak­ing the call, women had only a 40 per­cent chance of get­ting hired.”

-Find ex­ec­u­tive spon­sor to sup­port equal pay

Ex­ec­u­tives with a legal or fi­nance back­ground make good spon­sors. At­tor­neys un­der­stand the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of pay dis­crim­i­na­tion. Fi­nance folks tend to un­der­stand the risk that a lack of di­ver­sity can cause as well as the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits an or­ga­ni­za­tion reaps when it has a work­force aligned with its client or con­sumer base.

Fits­mall­busi­ness.com

[Robert Calaf]

Hi Shane,

I have some agree­ments and dis­agree­ments with your ar­gu­ment on this topic. All in good fun though.

I do agree with your think­ing on re­mov­ing gen­der based terms, or dis­crim­i­na­tory lan­guage in terms of the job title and de­scrip­tion of the job. Same with elim­i­nat­ing prior salary ques­tions from an em­ployee in­ter­view. The gen­der based terms/dis­crim­i­na­tory lan­guage have no place on a job de­scrip­tion/serve no pur­pose in de­scrib­ing the job and may cause the per­son ap­ply­ing to be­lieve the com­pany is al­ready lean­ing to­wards hir­ing a spe­cific gen­der over an­other. Prior salary ques­tions in a job in­ter­view only serve to put the per­son ap­ply­ing for the job in a salary box. The em­ployer may have al­ready had a salary range set for the po­si­tion but if per­son X tells them in the in­ter­view they did their last job for much lower; then the per­son in­ter­view­ing may see an open­ing to sim­ply hire them for their pre­vi­ous salary plus X amount be­cause the bar has al­ready been set low. This is an un­fair and ma­nip­u­la­tive prac­tice.

The only part I dis­agree on is the point you made about Ed­u­ca­tion and in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence are two ex­am­ples of dis­crim­i­na­tion in screen­ing ques­tions. Sure, these ques­tions may act as a fil­ter to peo­ple with­out di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence or ed­u­ca­tion per­tain­ing to that job, but there are many jobs that re­quire that to be suc­cess­ful or for some­one to be fully up and run­ning with­out cost­ing the com­pany ad­di­tional time and money to train some­one who has not op­er­ated in that space be­fore. I would rather this con­tinue to be the prac­tice, peo­ple can still apply with­out the ed­u­ca­tion/in­dus­try exp and the com­pany de­cide if they take the risk. Ed­u­ca­tion and in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence is re­ally what makes a re­sume, a re­sume and sets us apart from the crowd. Why shouldn’t we con­tinue to use that as a means to set our­selves apart from other ap­pli­cants?

[Sonia Gonzalez]

Sonia Gon­za­lez

4/04/2021

Pay eq­uity is­sues are ram­pant across the world and even in big com­pa­nies.  The first step would be on­line or human re­sources pay­roll in­for­ma­tion in the com­pany. In the in­dus­try, the pay scale ac­cord­ing to des­ig­na­tion can be iden­ti­fied. In the com­pany it­self, this can be com­pared with two-per­son work­ing at the same level but dif­fer­ent gen­der, male and fe­male. So, com­par­i­son in terms of the job de­scrip­tion and no years’ ex­pe­ri­ence would give a bet­ter idea for com­par­i­son. This can be done for many lev­els, like en­try-level job pay­ment for both males and fe­males and mid­dle and top man­age­ment. It is gen­er­ally seen that the pay gap is more com­pre­hen­sive in mid­dle and top man­age­ment than the en­try-level jobs.

The sec­ond will be check­ing pro­mo­tions. It can also be iden­ti­fied in the com­pany and how fre­quently one is get­ting pro­moted and on good merit. Usu­ally, the dis­crim­i­na­tion be­tween men and women is ev­i­dent here as well. As HR mem­bers, we need to check the pay­roll and com­pare males in the com­pany, fe­males in the com­pany—there noth­ing wrong with any­body per­form­ing such tasks- if that’s part of their job de­scrip­tion. But some­times, the du­ties are per­ma­nently as­signed to women rather than men for no rea­son. That’s when ei­ther an im­plicit or ex­plicit gen­der bias is most likely at play.

An ex­ter­nal pay audit can also help re­cover the gaps. HR can bet­ter serve in com­par­i­son to come up with in­sights into this dis­crim­i­na­tion. After the prob­lem or the gap is iden­ti­fied, the plan to re­solve it can also be male and fe­male brought out. The goal would be to have com­pelling ev­i­dence after re­search to pre­sent to man­age­ment to over­turn the cur­rent un­bal­anced in­come be­tween fe­males vs. males. The au­di­tors need to per­form a re­gres­sion analy­sis to ac­count for pay dif­fer­en­tials bases on le­git­i­mate fac­tors, such as ex­pe­ri­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, and train­ing. Hence, the pro­duc­tiv­ity, ef­fi­ciency, at­tri­tion rate, etc., of men and women can be re­solved.  This can be used to ad­dress women’s bi­ases as they would take more breaks or not be that ef­fi­cient as men can be tack­led. This points out that women are more loyal to a com­pany, are more hard­work­ing and dili­gent, and work at the same level as men, with upper man­age­ment facts. Stud­ies show pay­ing women less than their coun­ter­parts may be a di­rect in­di­ca­tion of lower pro­duc­tiv­ity and morale.

In sum­ma­tion, com­pen­sa­tion can be de­ter­mined by job analy­sis and job eval­u­a­tions. The re­cruit­ment should com­plete an analy­sis of plan­ning and an audit re­quired for fix­ing the pay, and we should do the pay gap analy­sis to know how much we should pay. There is a fed­eral law that needs equal pay for work.

http://​www.​payequity.​gov.​on
http://​www.​payscale.​com
http://​www.​shrm.​org

[Sonia Gonzalez]

Sorry made a mis­take on the link

http://​www.​payequity.​gov.​on.​ca

http://​www.​ame​rica​npro​gres​s.​org

[Robert Calaf]

Hi Sonia,

Great post! I am a bit still on the fence on whether the Pay Eq­uity Audit should be con­ducted in house or by an ex­ter­nal com­pany (not con­sid­er­ing size of com­pany in this thought). Rea­son being, de­pend­ing on how long you have been with the com­pany, it may be a bit tricky to come off as neu­tral or ob­jec­tive to your man­age­ment staff or per­haps com­pany lead­er­ship if pay in­equity was tak­ing place under your watch or per­haps out of the de­sire to save the com­pany money; em­ploy­ees were hired in a man­ner that may look like pay in­equity when it comes to gen­der when the data is an­a­lyzed. One way to get that ob­jec­tive/neu­tral third party view would be to en­list the help of an ex­ter­nal com­pany to con­duct the audit and you sim­ply pre­sent their rec­om­men­da­tions to com­pany lead­er­ship and lobby for their buy in to ad­dress this issue and speak to the ben­e­fits.

We all know this is ab­solutely the right thing to do but in any ac­tion that one takes in a com­pany that is going to cost the com­pany money or per­haps un­earth some skele­tons in the closet. It is best to think strate­gi­cally how you can sell the ini­tia­tive and not end up being the solo ad­vo­cate work­ing against a moun­tain of re­sis­tance.

[Robert Calaf]

If I were an HR pro­fes­sional tasked with en­sur­ing gen­der pay eq­uity is tak­ing place at my or­ga­ni­za­tion. I would take a look at two key areas. The or­ga­ni­za­tions pay­roll and hir­ing/pro­mo­tion prac­tices. Based on my ex­pert google re­search, the fol­low­ing tools/plans were rec­om­mended by the Har­vard Busi­ness Re­view and leanin.org

“Pay Eq­uity Audit – in­volves com­par­ing the pay of em­ploy­ees doing “like for like” work in an or­ga­ni­za­tion (ac­count­ing for rea­son­able dif­fer­en­tials, such as work ex­pe­ri­ence, cre­den­tials, and job per­for­mance), and in­ves­ti­gat­ing the causes of any pay dif­fer­ences that can­not be jus­ti­fied. HR pro­fes­sion­als typ­i­cally lead the audit at small or­ga­ni­za­tions (50+ em­ploy­ees), while larger em­ploy­ers (500+ em­ploy­ees) hire con­sult­ing firms that spe­cial­ize in pay and re­wards.” (Source: https://​hbr.​org/​2020/​11/​how-​to-​identify-​and-​fix-​pay-​inequality-​at-​your-​company)

“En­sure that hir­ing and pro­mo­tions are fair -Au­dit re­views and pro­mo­tions reg­u­larly to en­sure your com­pany is not sys­tem­at­i­cally rat­ing men more highly and pro­mot­ing them more quickly. Train man­agers so they un­der­stand the im­pact of gen­der bias on their de­ci­sion-mak­ing and put clear and con­sis­tent cri­te­ria in place to re­duce bias in staffing de­ci­sions and per­for­mance re­views.” (Source: https://​leanin.​org/​what-​companies-​can-​do-​about-​equal-​pay#!)

I would con­duct both tasks as de­scribed and while I would not dis­close in­di­vid­ual pay ad­just­ments (made to reach pay eq­uity), I would an­nounce in­ter­nally with­out con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion that progress is being made and show a mea­sur­able per­for­mance tar­get of pay eq­uity. This would give com­pany em­ploy­ees a goal/cause to rally be­hind and cel­e­brate. Con­tin­u­ous train­ing of man­age­ment and au­dit­ing to en­sure hir­ing and pro­mo­tion prac­tices are fair would be on an on­go­ing basis. I would want to cre­ate the cul­ture in the com­pany that HR is keep­ing a very close eye on hir­ing and pro­mo­tions and that any prac­tice that is not in line with com­pany pay eq­uity poli­cies will be sub­ject to scrutiny or cor­rec­tion. No one should be in­tro­duc­ing their own sub­jec­tive bias into any per­son­nel de­ci­sion mak­ing. This is a key point I will com­mu­ni­cate to all lead­ers across the com­pany.

[Sonia Gonzalez]

Hi Robert, This is a quin­tes­sen­tial re­sponse, very well writ­ten, very well ex­plained, very well thought out. All bases are cov­ers. I mea­sured my­self to sev­eral stan­dards. I overly cri­tique my­self, but this is how I will love to ex­plain, and this is the way  I hope it comes across. BRAVO…

Thank you for Shar­ing.

[Miko Nourieli]

Hello Robert

It seems we both used our ex­pert google re­search and stum­bled upon the same ar­ti­cle from the Har­vard Busi­ness Re­view. I also thought the first step should be a PEA like sug­gested in the ar­ti­cle as that is a great base to start from when de­ter­min­ing if there are pay in­equal­i­ties and where ex­actly are they tak­ing place. I also agree with your de­ci­sion to not dis­close em­ploy­ees pay and ad­just­ments made as that can cause more feel­ings of un­fair­ness if some­one sees a de­ci­sion they dis­agree with or think they should have got­ten. Great post.

[Richard Ledesma]

Hey Robert,

I re­ally like your re­sponse, like Sonia men­tioned ear­lier it is very well writen and ex­plained, I agree with you on your de­ci­sion to not dis­close em­ployee pay as well. This is a very good ex­pla­na­tion once again.

[Sow]

The un­for­tu­nate re­al­ity is that de­spite the laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Equal Pay Act (EPA), and the Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act (see Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act of 2009), em­ploy­ers still seem to have the upper hand when it comes to this issue. Too many em­ploy­ees aren’t aware of what their rights are or how to as­sert them. Many women aren’t even aware of how grossly un­der­paid they are. And too many women who are aware that they’re un­der­paid are afraid to speak up for fear of los­ing their jobs or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing other re­tal­i­a­tion. The shaky job mar­ket in re­cent years cer­tainly hasn’t helped this cli­mate. The ob­ser­va­tion is that men earn on av­er­age more than women. Many be­lieve that women on av­er­age $0.79 for every $1.00 men earn. This rep­re­sents a 2.7 per­cent­age point shrink in the un­ad­justed pay gap from three years ago, when women earned, on av­er­age, $0.76 for every $1.00 men earn.

How­ever, the gaps oc­cur­ring in the labor force can be iden­ti­fied and nar­rowed by con­duct­ing PEAs (Pay Eq­uity Audit). A pay eq­uity analy­sis also called an equal pay audit, or a pay par­ity audit is a method of re­search­ing pay rates within your or­ga­ni­za­tion and as­sess­ing any dif­fer­ences in pay rel­a­tive to age, race, gen­der, job de­scrip­tion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, se­nior­ity, and a wide range of other cri­te­ria.

Be­fore start­ing the audit, the au­di­tors have to make sure that we are work­ing with an ac­cu­rate set of em­ployee data. You should have each em­ployee’s length of ser­vice, job clas­si­fi­ca­tion, and de­mo­graphic in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing gen­der, race, and age. Ac­cess­ing this data may re­quire a sub­stan­tial clean-up ef­fort, de­pend­ing on the com­plex­ity and qual­ity of HR record-keep­ing sys­tems. For ex­am­ple, job ti­tles, job grades, and align­ing “like jobs with like jobs” (those that re­quire equal skill, ef­fort, and re­spon­si­bil­ity under sim­i­lar con­di­tions) is es­pe­cially crit­i­cal to pay eq­uity analy­sis — and fre­quently out-of-date.

Once you have a clean data set, the au­di­tors per­form a re­gres­sion analy­sis to ac­count for pay dif­fer­en­tials based on le­git­i­mate fac­tors, such as ex­pe­ri­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, and train­ing. You’ll then be able to iden­tify out­liers based on gen­der, race, and age.

All the el­e­ments cited above are a sum­mary of the process of op­er­at­ing the PEA. More specif­i­cally, the PEA can fol­low these 5 steps:

1. Plan early and plan well

By iden­ti­fy­ing the pur­pose of the analy­sis, you will de­ter­mine the method­ol­ogy, time­line, per­son­nel, re­quired bud­get, and stake­holder buy-in nec­es­sary to con­duct a thor­ough and ac­cu­rate audit.

2. Re­search your pay poli­cies

Be­fore you even gather the com­pen­sa­tion rates for all rel­e­vant po­si­tions, you need to un­der­stand how these rates were de­ter­mined. Hav­ing an un­der­stand­ing of his­tor­i­cal pay rates will not only safe­guard the or­ga­ni­za­tion against legal ac­tion but will also help you un­der­stand the root causes of any pay in­equity that cur­rently ex­ists.

3. Gather the data and an­a­lyze them

When gath­er­ing data, the in­for­ma­tion you’ll need will vary de­pend­ing on the scope and pur­pose of your audit. Typ­i­cally, you’ll want to in­clude in­for­ma­tion on job title, job grade or level, de­part­ment, date of hire, gen­der, and, de­pend­ing on the scope of the audit, race, age, ed­u­ca­tion level, be­gin­ning salary, and over­time pay and bonuses. Then, armed with the pay­ment poli­cies of your or­ga­ni­za­tion, you can start to gather other im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion like per­for­mance rat­ings, puni­tive ac­tions, and level of ex­pe­ri­ence within the given field. Ex­pect this step to be time and la­bor-in­ten­sive, as it will in­form the bulk of your wage gap analy­sis. An­a­lyz­ing the data will mean look­ing to de­ter­mine whether there are dif­fer­ences in wages that can be tied to gen­der, race, age, or any other cri­te­ria. This analy­sis varies in com­plex­ity de­pend­ing on group size, mea­sur­able cri­te­ria, and type of com­pen­sa­tion.

4. As­sess whether pay dif­fer­ences are legally jus­ti­fied

Your analy­sis may re­veal that em­ploy­ees per­form­ing com­pa­ra­ble work are not paid the same wage. How­ever, this doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that un­law­ful ac­tiv­ity is oc­cur­ring. Fed­eral law dic­tates that dif­fer­ences in pay are legal if they are based on se­nior­ity, merit, a sys­tem that mea­sures earn­ings, quan­tity or qual­ity of pro­duc­tion, or any fac­tor other than sex. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act elab­o­rates on the vague lan­guage of that last clause by adding lan­guage for pro­tec­tions specif­i­cally “on the basis of race, color, sex, re­li­gion or na­tional ori­gin.”

5. Take ac­tion to mit­i­gate any pay dif­fer­ences

If no ap­plic­a­ble state or fed­eral laws jus­tify the wage gaps in the or­ga­ni­za­tion, then it’s time to ad­dress the dis­par­i­ties. The com­pany will likely need to make ad­just­ments to pay­ment. How­ever, as the au­di­tor, you are not legally al­lowed to re­duce em­ployee com­pen­sa­tion. This means you’ll need a fi­nan­cially vi­able way to raise, if nec­es­sary, the pay rate of one or sev­eral em­ploy­ees. Dis­cuss your audit find­ings and get ap­proval on a wage in­crease from fi­nance or human re­sources. Then, take every­thing you’ve learned and store or pub­lish your pay­ment poli­cies to in­form any fu­ture hir­ing or wage de­ci­sions.

In my opin­ion, these steps can em­pha­size the is­sues going on in the or­ga­ni­za­tion, but they are a lit­tle bit for­mal. In ad­di­tion, the or­ga­ni­za­tion can go fur­ther by im­ple­ment­ing an ac­cu­rate or more ef­fi­cient method for en­sur­ing fair pay for women. First, train­ing all the work­ers on the con­se­quences of gen­der bias, whereas you are su­per­vi­sor, man­ager, or a sim­ple worker. Sec­ond, giv­ing equal op­por­tu­nity to all the sexes. Women should have the same adds of ad­vance­ment as men. They (women) should get ac­cess to train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­grams, they also de­serve men­tor­ships and spon­sor­ships for rais­ing their per­for­mances. Lastly, every­one in the or­ga­ni­za­tion, re­gard­less of sex, must know how the or­ga­ni­za­tion de­ter­mines com­pen­sa­tions. Thus, every­one will be aware of the bases which drive his pay.

 

Work Cited:

https://​www.​lucidchart.​com/​blog/​pay-​equity-​analysis

https://​hbr.​org/​2020/​11/​how-​to-​identify-​and-​fix-​pay-​inequality-​at-​your-​company

https://​www.​glassdoor.​com/​employers/​blog/​5-​ways-​address-​gender-​pay-​gap-​company/

 

 

[Miko Nourieli]

Hello Sow

It seems that you also found the same ar­ti­cle from Har­vard Busi­ness Re­view that me and Robert used, I am glad to see that it wasn’t just me that found it use­ful. I re­ally en­joyed your post be­cause you ex­plained each step clearly and eas­ily. I agree with you that there can and will be pay dif­fer­ences for peo­ple doing com­pa­ra­ble work based on mul­ti­ple fac­tors other than sex which should be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion and if there are any dif­fer­ences that do not arise from those that are legally jus­ti­fied, they should be cor­rected. Thank you very much for shar­ing your post.

[Talisha Smith]

As a human re­source di­rec­tor I al­ways en­force equal­ity and re­spect for all em­ploy­ers. In order to run a suc­cess­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion the peo­ple who con­tribute to the busi­ness must feel safe, ap­pre­ci­ated and val­ued. It has been brought to my at­ten­tion that woman re­ceive less then men do even though they do the same work and some­times have the same ed­u­ca­tion. It af­fects Black and Latina woman es­pe­cially. As re­ported by Har­vard busi­ness re­view black and latino woman loose up to $1 mil­lion or more over a 40 year ca­reer. That is a huge prob­lem and shows dis­crim­i­na­tion and that is not morally right.

In order to make sure every­one is treated fairly and paid fairly we must re­view gen­der based roles and make changes. We have to get out of the mind frame that woman are in­ca­pable of doing the same jobs as men just be­cause they are deemed weaker by so­ci­ety. In­stead of view­ing jobs as gen­der based we must view them based on per­for­mance and ca­pa­bil­ity. We must also get rid of pay­ing peo­ple more just be­cause they have prior ex­pe­ri­ence. Just be­cause you have prior ex­pe­ri­ence does not mean you can do the job bet­ter than some­one who does not have ex­pe­ri­ence.

Doing re­search I came across tac­tics that would help me fix prob­lems in the com­pany. I gave out a sur­vey so that my em­ploy­ees can pin­point ex­actly were they think we are fail­ing as a com­pany and what areas do they think we are un­fair. One of the biggest prob­lems were the dif­fer­ences in pay. As a di­rec­tor i de­cided to con­duct a PEA. PEA is a pay eq­uity audit that com­pares em­ploy­ees doing the same work who gets paid dif­fer­ent salaries based on work ex­pe­ri­ence,cre­den­tials and job per­for­mance. Au­di­tors look at pay dif­fer­ences that can not be jus­ti­fied. Since my com­pany is a small or­ga­ni­za­tion my team and I will do the audit. Big­ger com­pa­nies hire con­sult­ing firms to han­dle their au­dits.

Be­fore we start the audit we must make sure that all the data we have is up to date so that we can make an ac­cu­rate de­ci­sion. In order to make sure every­thing is cor­rect we must have the em­ploy­ees length of ser­vice,job,clas­si­fi­ca­tion and de­mo­graphic in­for­ma­tion,in­clud­ing gen­der and race. Hope­fully our records are filed prop­erly so that it makes it eas­ier for us to go through or we will have to tidy up or records. Once that step has been com­pleted.

[Sow]

<h6>HELLO TAL­ISHA,</h6>
You are com­pletely right. All is about a state of mind. The so­ci­ety, even women should see them­selves as equal com­peti­tors with men in the labor force. Re­cruit­ment en­cour­ag­ing gen­der in­equal­ity will are not help­ful, stereo­types and dis­crim­i­na­tions have to be banned from the job mar­ket.

 

[Nelson Sanchez]

Hello Tal­isha,

I just wanted to say this thread was amaz­ing. I like how you put your thought into your re­search and ex­panded the pay gap con­ver­sa­tion and split it be­tween gen­ders and racial eq­uity. You re­ally broke it down into parts and ex­plained how pay gaps af­fects not only gen­der but how it ef­fects the Latino and Black work­force as well. Well done Tal­isha!

[Miko Nourieli]

If I were an HR pro­fes­sional tasked with fig­ur­ing out how to fix pay in­equal­ity at my com­pany I would take some steps to first fig­ure out what the pay in­equal­i­ties ac­tu­ally are, and what pay sys­tem to put in place that would be fair for every­one.

First I would most likely con­duct a PEA or a Pay Eq­uity Audit, which is ex­plained here in a quote by Har­vard Busi­ness Re­view “a PEA in­volves com­par­ing the pay of em­ploy­ees doing “like for like” work in an or­ga­ni­za­tion (ac­count­ing for rea­son­able dif­fer­en­tials, such as work ex­pe­ri­ence, cre­den­tials, and job per­for­mance), and in­ves­ti­gat­ing the causes of any pay dif­fer­ences that can­not be jus­ti­fied.” (https://​hbr.​org/​2020/​11/​how-​to-​identify-​and-​fix-​pay-​inequality-​at-​your-​company)

For that I would need clear and ac­cu­rate data about my em­ploy­ees in­clud­ing their de­mo­graphic info as well as job ex­pe­ri­ence, length of ser­vice, and job clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Once I de­ter­mined the dif­fer­ences in pay I would try to rene­go­ti­ate em­ploy­ees com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages that needed rene­go­ti­at­ing.  I would try to offer an in­crease in pay or maybe would try to have a good num­ber of ben­e­fits that em­ploy­ees would be able to choose from that would help them in their per­sonal lives or their fu­ture, such as: re­tire­ment plans, health or life in­sur­ance, ed­u­ca­tional pro­grams, well­ness pro­grams, etc.

I think it would be good to offer other things than just more money be­cause every­one has a dif­fer­ent lifestyle and want dif­fer­ent things, not al­ways just money. And giv­ing them the choice would take out any bias or un­fair­ness.  I know I would prob­a­bly take a lit­tle less money if it meant I had good health in­sur­ance. I would also start to do a PEA every cou­ple of months to en­sure that every­one is re­ceiv­ing fair com­pen­sa­tion for their work.

[Jean Muy]

I like your take on re ne­go­ti­at­ing the em­ploy­ees pay based on upon many sort of fac­tors such as job ex­pe­ri­ence. It’s an idea where many or­ga­ni­za­tions can do nowa­days to as­sess where every­one at the work­place is at to make every­one’s job as equal as pos­si­ble.

[Jaylen Santana]

Hi Miko

I find it re­ally in­ter­est­ing how in your ap­proach you would try your best to ac­com­mo­date the em­ployee’s needs and/or wants dur­ing your re-ne­go­ti­a­tions that would look into their fu­ture with the com­pany which would show you care as well as the PEA’s.

[Zoila Cedeno]

Hi Miko.

I en­joyed read­ing your post.  I like that you in­di­cate that some­times it’s not all about money and that de­pend­ing on their lifestyles, some peo­ple can find other ben­e­fits more im­por­tant that a pay in­crease.  One of the pos­i­tive things we can take away from Covid is the fact that many com­pa­nies, who would have never al­lowed it pre­vi­ously, were forced to allow their em­ploy­ees to work from home.  Un­for­tu­nately, there are still so many The­ory X man­agers out there who be­lieve that an em­ployee needs to be mon­i­tored to make sure that they work.   Work­ing from home dur­ing this time has proven to many em­ploy­ers that while there are ex­cep­tions, most peo­ple can be trusted to do their job with min­i­mal su­per­vi­sion.  I think more com­pa­nies should em­brace re­mote work­ing, even if it was just as an al­ter­nate week type of sit­u­a­tion.  It would re­duce over­head ex­penses for the or­ga­ni­za­tion who would be able to oc­cupy smaller of­fices or elim­i­nate of­fice space and it would re­duce trav­el­ing and meal ex­penses for the em­ploy­ees.  I know many peo­ple who would take a smaller salary if it meant work­ing re­motely all the time.

[amadou bah]

Pay eq­uity is out of con­trol across the world and big com­pa­nies. be­cause the com­pany is not will pay fe­males the same amount as males.  If I was an HR pro­fes­sional, I would en­sure the gen­der pay eq­uity is tak­ing place in my or­ga­ni­za­tion. I would take three key areas. The trans­par­ent pay sys­tem, ad­vo­cat­ing, pe­ti­tion, and gather data.

• Trans­par­ent pay sys­tem

This means that when a male and a fe­male are work­ing in the same or­ga­ni­za­tion same role in the job. They both will re­ceive the same pay­ment. For ex­am­ple, let say Vic­to­ria and James work­ing in this com­pany like ama­zon on the cus­tomer ser­vice role. They both have the same duty on the job. Then both of them James and Vic­to­ria should get paid the same amount.

• Ad­vo­cat­ing and pe­ti­tion­ing

Cre­at­ing a busi­ness prepo­si­tional that helps with the issue fac­ing both gen­der’s in­equal­ity of pay. The em­ployee will sign a pe­ti­tion that will sup­port the fight against com­pany is­sues.

• Gather Data

When gath­er­ing data, you will need to in­clude all the in­for­ma­tion on the job title, grade or level de­part­ment, race, and re­li­gion, etc. fi­nally add a pay­ment pol­icy of your or­ga­ni­za­tion’s level of ex­pe­ri­ence.

To sum up, every­thing that has been stated about the com­pany needs to take a step back mak­ing sure that the or­ga­ni­za­tion is tak­ing ac­tion to fix pay eq­uity. Be­cause whether are you a fe­male or male if both em­ploy­ees do the same job, they both should get paid the same amount. It doesn’t mat­ter your gen­der, race, or re­li­gion.

https://​www.​the​bala​ncec​aree​rs.​com/​salary-​tra​nspa​renc​y-​1287067

https://​www.​britannica.​com/​topic/​petition-​law

https://​www.​lucidchart.​com/​blog/​pay-​equity-​analysis

[amadou bah]

Hello Miko, I like the fact that you men­tion that you are going to make a clar­i­fi­ca­tion to the em­ployee that job needs. and the ben­e­fit that the job comes with. be­cause there is some com­pany out there that does give they em­ployee ben­e­fit.

[Rayon Lambert]

Hello Amadou,

You made some great points in your post. I found that you could have elab­o­rate on the ad­vo­cat­ing and pe­ti­tion­ing point. If you are look­ing at each point in a flow, you should gather in­for­ma­tion to con­firm and ver­ify be­fore cre­at­ing a pe­ti­tion; if your com­pany has equal pay, you do not or may not need the use of ad­vo­cat­ing and pe­ti­tion­ing.

[Yaritza Rendon]

As an HR pro­fes­sional, if I wanted to fig­ure out if our or­ga­ni­za­tion is pay­ing its women fairly, one of the first steps I would take is to re­search the salaries that other or­ga­ni­za­tions are of­fer­ing their fe­male em­ploy­ees in sim­i­lar po­si­tions. The sec­ond step would be to eval­u­ate how much the em­ployee will cost our or­ga­ni­za­tion com­pared to the value the em­ployee is con­tribut­ing to ar­rive at a rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion pack­age. (Pat­ter­son, n.d.) But it is not al­ways about the money. We can com­pen­sate with cul­ture. Ques­tions to ask my­self in­clude, does my or­ga­ni­za­tion have a wel­com­ing work en­vi­ron­ment? Does my or­ga­ni­za­tion give its women room to grow? If not, what are ways we can reset the tone? We can com­pen­sate with job ben­e­fits. Does my or­ga­ni­za­tion pro­vide all fe­male em­ploy­ees with health in­sur­ance, PTO, paid leave, ma­ter­nity leave, or worker’s com­pen­sa­tion? Do our fe­male em­ploy­ees feel sup­ported by the or­ga­ni­za­tion? Do our fe­male em­ploy­ees feel like val­ued mem­bers of the or­ga­ni­za­tion? If not, what are ways we are able to show up for our fe­male em­ploy­ees? (Daum, n.d.)
<h1>Ref­er­ences</h1>
Daum, K. (n.d.). 5 Ways to As­sess Fair Pay. Re­trieved from Inc.: https://​www.​inc.​com/​kevin-​daum/​5-​ways-​to-​assess-​fair-​pay.​html

Pat­ter­son, L. (n.d.). How do I know if I’m com­pen­sat­ing em­ploy­ees fairly, in ac­cor­dance with in­dus­try stan­dards? Re­trieved from Zen­e­fits: https://​www.​zenefits.​com/​workest/​how-​do-​i-​know-​if-​im-​com​pens​atin​g-​an-​employees-​fairly-​in-​accordance-​with-​industry-​standards/

[Jean Muy]

I agree with your take on mak­ing sure the eval­u­a­tion of em­ploy­ees are the best they can be since you would al­ways need to make sure that an or­ga­ni­za­tion is com­ing out with the best peo­ple and high stan­dards no mat­ter what.

[Sow]

I agree with you, a com­par­i­son on wages could help to de­ter­mine the fair­ness of women’s salaries.

[Jean Muy]

Being in the sit­u­a­tion I’m cur­rently in, I would re as­sure every­one at the work­place to let them know that equal­ity across any­thing that goes on dur­ing work is being played out the way it should since at this point in time, this type of issue shouldn’t even be some­thing that turns into a prob­lem. I would need to make sure that every­one un­der­stands, both male and fe­male, any sort of job can be taken care of by who­ever gen­der no mat­ter what it is. Set­ting out right stan­dards to en­sure every­one is being un­der­stood of what they are re­quired to do and based upon their per­for­mance, should be cred­ited 100% for their full ef­forts.

Once you get every­one on the same page re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion, it’s eas­ier to set out a pos­si­ble ques­tion­airre re­gard­ing var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions to make sure what type of re­sponses you are re­ceiv­ing back from your fel­low work­ers and set­ting a cor­rect bal­ance for each per­son. We would need to make sure as a whole that all the data from the sur­veys are tal­lied up cor­rectly and being sorted to get the most ac­cu­rate re­sults from it to as­sess the next move into bring­ing equal­ity across the work­place.

[Richard Ledesma]

Hello Jean

I to­tally agree and like how you would put every­one on the same page, re as­sur­ing every­one at the work­place is ex­tremely im­por­tant. Set­ting out the right stan­dards to en­sure every­one is being un­der­stood is an­other key to make the com­pany well sta­bled as a whole. I like how you also said that once you get every­one on the same page, it does seem a bit eas­ier to set out pos­si­ble ques­tion­naire, I liked your take on that es­pe­cially.

[Richard Ledesma]

In my ways at look­ing at things, I have seen the way that women get a slight por­tion of what a man gets. Or­ga­ni­za­tions need to re­ally look at what they are doing here with men and women. In my opin­ion or­ga­ni­za­tions should re­move gen­der bi­ased amounts and amount of work in work­places. Gen­der pay eq­uity is the main point in the or­ga­ni­za­tion if I were the HR pro­fes­sional. They need to com­pare the pay of the em­ploy­ees and make it even for every­one un­less you have a higher po­si­tion then you de­serve the most but other than that every fe­male and male should and will get paid the same amount. With all this comes re­spect for the em­ploy­ees. En­forc­ing equal­ity is a huge key to suc­cess in a busi­ness just like re­spect. I be­lieve that this issue hap­pens all across the world and huge com­pa­nies and busi­nesses. So, like I men­tioned ear­lier I would make gen­der pay eq­uity a pri­or­ity in my busi­ness and or­ga­ni­za­tion. This shouldn’t even be an issue in the first place and now it’s be­come a real prob­lem all across in­dus­tries. Let­ting every­one know the stan­dards of this is re­ally im­por­tant and it’s a must to let every­one know what to do and what they are doing it for based on their per­for­mance, you put in the ef­fort and you get re­warded even if you are a male or fe­male it shouldn’t be a prob­lem.

Once it is set­tled in the work­place and every­one is on the same page, we should and need to set a cor­rect bal­ance or stan­dard bal­ance for each per­son on what they pro­vide and do in our busi­ness, if you don’t like it then your wel­comed to walk out, sim­ple as that, we must do bet­ter as a whole and be equal. We need to make sure that we are to­gether and on the same page and bring equal­ity across our work­place and I will do any­thing in my power to do this.

[Nelson Sanchez]

Hi Richard,

I read over your thread and I like how you put this to­gether. It was well writ­ten and you cov­ered all the points for gen­der equal­ity in the work­place when it comes to pay gaps. I es­pe­cially like how you ex­plained that no po­si­tion should be looked at dif­fer­ently when it comes to gen­der.

[Rayon Lambert]

Hello Richard,

Though you made an in­ter­est­ing point, I think there are things you should con­sider. As a com­pany, the rules and poli­cies are cre­ated to en­sure pay equal­ity. Once the rules are in place, you need to en­sure that your com­pany is doing the right thing re­gard­ing equal pay. Gath­er­ing data both in and out­side of the com­pany will help with en­sur­ing that the com­pany does.

[Teri]

I like that you want to make sure every­one is on the same page. You want to form a team that feels ap­pre­ci­ated and equal to one an­other and that is a great way to begin.

[Rayon Lambert]

Pay dif­fer­ences be­tween gen­der have been a sig­nif­i­cant issue in prac­ti­cally every coun­try around the world. There was a meme that com­pares the high­est-paid woman in the WNBA to Le­bron James. The high­est-paid fe­male in the WNBA re­ceives $221,500 while they re­ceive over $38 mil­lion in the NBA. Know­ing these facts, I would not want to have that type of issue in the com­pany in which I have the power to help in­sti­tute change or make sure it does not hap­pen.
One of the first things I will do is look at the com­pany’s po­si­tions and see what men are get­ting paid in the com­pany com­pared to women. This in­cludes the start­ing salary in roles for both gen­ders. When I re­search the start­ing pay for each gen­der for each po­si­tion and look at the start­ing for each gen­der at the same grade, it will help me de­ter­mine and clar­ify if we are pro­mot­ing equal pay. One step I will take in mak­ing sure this is pos­si­ble is by hav­ing a stan­dard in­come for all peo­ple within the same po­si­tions. The pay dif­fer­ence will be based on ap­praisal and pro­mo­tion pay raise re­quire­ments. But the start­ing salary will have a spe­cific amount for every­one.
Look­ing at other com­pa­nies within the same in­dus­try as the com­pany I am work­ing for and com­par­ing the em­ploy­ees’ pay range with the same type of po­si­tion is an­other step I will take. By doing this, I will see if there is any dif­fer­ence in what women are paid in my com­pany com­pared to both men and women in other com­pa­nies of its type. This will help me un­der­stand what is needed to be done if there is a dif­fer­ence in a com­pany of the same kind as the com­pany I work for.
I will also look at dif­fer­ent job data­base web­sites like O*net and look at salary ranges. Web­sites like Salary.com and PayScale all talks about the dif­fer­ence in pay for var­i­ous com­pa­nies. O*net gives in­for­ma­tion on each po­si­tion and the na­tional av­er­age of each po­si­tion. The use of O*net will help me un­der­stand all that is needed for a po­si­tion and its av­er­age. Salary.com is an­other web­site that com­pares dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries in dif­fer­ent states. It looks at the salary of com­pa­nies and how they com­pare to the na­tional and state av­er­age. This will help me to see what my com­par­i­son is. Are the women in my com­pany com­pared equally to the na­tional av­er­age of men? If not, I now will have to look at ways to have it rec­ti­fied. An­other data that I will use are re­ports from Payscale. Payscale is a web­site that cre­ates data from dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries to com­pare the salary by gen­der, age, and race. Based on the data I gather from this web­site, I can now com­pare where my com­pany falls com­pared to the pay dif­fer­ence and then use this to take a mi­cro­scopic look at my com­pany’s per­for­mance.
Each av­enue I will take will help me un­der­stand and ver­ify that the com­pany is doing the right thing by the em­ploy­ees to en­sure gen­der pay equal­ity.

Ref­er­ences
Agu, N. (2021). The 20 High­est-paid WNBA play­ers and how much they make. Re­trieved from Just Rich­est: https://​justrichest.​com/​the-​20-​highest-​paid-​wnba-​players-​in-​2021-​and-​how-​much-​they-​make/
O*NET On­line. (2021). Re­trieved from O*NET: https://​www.​onetonline.​org/
Payscale. (2021). The State of the Gen­der Pay Gap in 2021. Payscale.

[Nelson Sanchez]

For decades, Women have been treated dif­fer­ently in the work­place and in gen­eral in this “male dom­i­nated” world. They have al­ways been the shadow of male fig­ures and have never been rec­og­nized for all the ef­forts they made in help­ing the world de­velop. It wasn’t just males chang­ing the world, fe­males had a big part in that as well. From my ex­pe­ri­ence in the work field I’ve no­ticed women being treated dif­fer­ently when it comes to pay gaps and ac­knowl­edge­ment. From sources that I viewed on­line, I found in­for­ma­tion from a his­tor­i­cal view all the way to the pre­sent which can be found on https://​www.​striking-​women.​org/​module/​workplace-​issues-​past-​and-​present/​gender-​pay-​gap-​and-​struggle-​equal-​pay . Ac­cord­ing to my source the causes of the pay gap were due to dis­crim­i­na­tion, un­der­valu­ing women’s skills, and Tra­di­tions/Stereo­types. As an HR pro­fes­sional my job is to make sure there is pay eq­uity in the work­place.

Three ways I will make sure that is in ef­fect is that:

There will be no dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind.

What I mean by this state­ment is that men or women will not be treated dif­fer­ently but will be treated equally in the work­place. One party will not be fa­vored more than the other, No­body will have priv­i­leges, and no fa­voritism will be al­lowed.

Men and Women get the same amount of ac­knowl­edg­ment and per­for­mance ap­praisals.

What I mean by this state­ment is that when men or women do out­stand­ing work they will get the same amount of treat­ment when it comes to ac­knowl­edge­ment and per­for­mance ap­praisals so no­body will feel left out or feel like they aren’t bring­ing any value to the work­place.

Pro­gres­sion and pro­mo­tions will be in ef­fect so that the work­place can adopt a mov­ing hi­er­ar­chy struc­ture to bring in more em­ploy­ees.

What I mean by this state­ment is that I want to pro­vide em­ploy­ees the op­por­tu­nity to ad­vance in their ca­reer paths and not stay in the same po­si­tion for their en­tire ca­reer. I want this to hap­pen but on an equal basis mean­ing men and women both ad­vance to the top with the same salary amounts and pay in­creases.

[Jennifer Baker]

How would you en­sure that there is no dis­crim­i­na­tion? I mean, it’s a lovely the­ory and ideal, def­i­nitely….but most com­pa­nies no longer list jobs as being “$300/week for men, $200/week for women” and haven’t for decades, but the pay gap per­sists (and I think few com­pa­nies would say “yes, we dis­crim­i­nate”). The dif­fi­cult part is that sim­ply say­ing “we will not dis­crim­i­nate” does not ac­count for un­con­scious bias lead­ing to ad­di­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties for [white] men, greater weight given to pos­i­tive per­for­mance re­views of men, the same ne­go­ti­at­ing tech­niques used by women seen as a neg­a­tive (there’s lots of data on this; to list only one ar­ti­cle: “Overt ag­gres­sive­ness that many would con­sider vig­or­ous ad­vo­cacy if adopted by men, may be char­ac­ter­ized as of­fen­sive and threat­en­ing when used by women.” https://​www.​neg​otia​tion​s.​com/​articles/​gender-​interaction/ (there are stud­ies this is based on though I don’t have them handy right now)). Point being, there needs to be real strat­egy and teeth be­hind the Good In­tent Poli­cies or they just don’t work.

[Jaylen Santana]

The first step I would take to en­sure that the women in the or­ga­ni­za­tion were get­ting paid equally is to a) be trans­par­ent. One way to do this is salary trans­parency. Salary trans­parency is an ap­proach to pay and com­pen­sa­tion that is the exact op­po­site of the long­stand­ing norm among most em­ploy­ers, in which what the or­ga­ni­za­tion pays to whom is kept largely se­cret. Dis­cussing how much money we make is a cul­tural taboo that does not help any­one ex­cept peo­ple who want to ben­e­fit from tilted ne­go­ti­a­tions and it’s es­pe­cially harm­ful to women.

The sec­ond step I would take is to b) stop ne­go­ti­at­ing. The idea is to cut ne­go­ti­a­tions and in­sist on pay­ing mar­ket value be­cause women tend to ne­go­ti­ate less often and and end up ask­ing for less money than men when they do. It would be much bet­ter to cut the ne­go­ti­a­tions com­pletely and elect to pay all em­ploy­ees the mar­ket value for their jobs. This can be achiev­able by cre­at­ing an equa­tion that ac­counts for mar­ket value, years of ex­pe­ri­ence, and lo­ca­tion, then mak­ing this equa­tion pub­lic to all em­ploy­ees and po­ten­tial hires. (Using a for­mula like this helps pre­vent the wage gap be­fore it even has the chance to take hold)

For my source I used: https://​blog.​capterra.​com/​the-​hr-​pro​fess​iona​ls-​guide-​to-​addressing-​the-​gender-​pay-​gap/

[Jennifer Baker]

The no-ne­go­ti­at­ing ap­proach I think will gain a lot of trac­tion in the com­ing years. It’s still some­thing of a hard sell and most com­pa­nies don’t em­brace it but I think it will be­come more pop­u­lar. How­ever, I think sig­nif­i­cant care needs to be taken to make clear what pro­mo­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties are going for­ward with that – oth­er­wise the com­pany risks being seen as hav­ing less po­ten­tial up­ward mo­bil­ity, which would im­pact the per­cent­age of top-level can­di­dates who choose to ac­cept of­fers.

[Teri]

The Im­portance of Pay Eq­uity (shrm.​org)

First step I would take as an HR pro­fes­sional would be to look up all le­gal­ity re­gard­ing equal pay. Then once I am done with my re­search, I will ini­ti­ate for salaries to be writ­ten in stone through­out the com­pany. I feel this will give every­one a sense of se­cu­rity by al­low­ing every­one to know, that every­one no mat­ter the gen­der will be treated equally. Every­one will re­ceive a salary that fits their job de­scrip­tion, whether male or fe­male. Same job du­ties and same po­si­tion equals same pay.

Sec­ond step I would take to en­sure every­one is equally com­pen­sated, is to imply that when em­ploy­ers are giv­ing out bonuses and pay raises they must eval­u­ate and in­crease their em­ploy­ees salaries. Those whom work ethics are to it’s stan­dards or greater, should be com­pen­sated the same amount of money. Al­though peo­ple may have dif­fer­ent back­grounds, the job it­self, du­ties and title are the same and it should not be viewed in any other way. At the end of the day, it is about find­ing in­di­vid­u­als who view every­one equally. In­di­vid­u­als who know every­one should and is to be treated with the same fair­ness.

My last em­ployer made sure when we re­ceived raises, they were all equal. it was not just be­cause we worked for it but that was his way of mak­ing sure we all felt ap­pre­ci­ated with­out com­par­i­son.

[Zoila Cedeno]

If I were an HR man­ager tasked with look­ing into the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s pay-eq­uity sit­u­a­tion, I would pro­ceed to con­duct an in­ter­nal audit of every­one on staff to de­ter­mine their job title, de­part­ment, date of hire, gen­der, age, race, their level of ex­pe­ri­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, be­gin­ning salary, cur­rent salary, over­time pay, how long they’ve been with the com­pany, how they were re­cruited, who per­formed the in­ter­views and how hir­ing de­ci­sions were made. I would look through their per­son­nel records to as­cer­tain how often em­ploy­ees were eval­u­ated dur­ing their time with the com­pany, whether raises and bonuses were given and how often those oc­curred. Next, I would look at the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s pay poli­cies and com­pare the work and pay of em­ploy­ees in sim­i­lar po­si­tions. I would con­tact local re­cruit­ment agen­cies and re­search salary lev­els for each po­si­tion on re­cruit­ment web­sites like in­deed and Glass­door to de­ter­mine what com­peti­tors are of­fer­ing em­ploy­ees in sim­i­lar po­si­tions and what the mar­ket rate for each po­si­tion is by look­ing at web­sites like O*Net. Then, I would an­a­lyze my find­ings to make sure that there were no ob­vi­ous pat­terns of gen­der or cul­tural bias, pay in­equal­ity and whether the or­ga­ni­za­tion was meet­ing statu­tory pay lev­els. If any pay dis­par­i­ties are found, they would need to be cor­rected within the next pay­roll cycle. Lastly, I would mark my cal­en­dar to per­form this analy­sis every year.

I would also hold a meet­ing with the hir­ing team to make sure that every­one on the hir­ing team was on the same page re­gard­ing is­sues of di­ver­sity and per­sonal bi­ases. I would sched­ule dis­crim­i­na­tion and anti-bias train­ing for all man­age­ment po­si­tions to en­sure that man­age­ment per­son­nel un­der­stand, learn to rec­og­nize how bias works, and make fairer de­ci­sions. For stereo­types and bi­ases to be elim­i­nated, we need to change how we think. We need to be con­scious of the words we use. Dif­fer­ent words and ex­pres­sions have dif­fer­ent mean­ings for dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Be­come an ally for those team mem­bers who are un­der­rep­re­sented. Speak for some­one in the mo­ment. For ex­am­ple, if you are con­duct­ing a meet­ing and a team mem­ber is in­ter­rupted or spo­ken over, you can tell the per­son who in­ter­rupted, “I’d like to hear what they have to say”. An­other op­tion would be to go around the room and ask each per­son in­di­vid­u­ally, “what are your thoughts or rec­om­men­da­tions?” so that every­one can be heard.

Gen­der pay gap is only of the many is­sues HR man­agers must deal with. The field of Human Re­sources is quickly be­com­ing every or­ga­ni­za­tion’s most im­por­tant tool and their first line of de­fense in mak­ing sure that busi­nesses stay com­pet­i­tive, re­cruit­ing the best tal­ent avail­able while mak­ing sure com­pa­nies re­main com­pli­ant with labor laws to avoid costly lit­i­ga­tion.

https://​www.​shrm.​org/​hr-​today/​news/​hr-​magazine/​summer2019/​Pages/​closing-​the-​gender-​pay-​gap.​aspx
https://​leanin.​org/​what-​companies-​can-​do-​about-​equal-​pay
https://​leanin.​org/​gender-​bias-​cards/​grid/​card/​set-​2/​1

[Author]

Posts