There are multiple reasons companies should support equal pay for equal work, beyond the fact that it’s the right thing to do. Among them are to avoid lawsuits and to improve or enhance their brand.
Here’s how to achieve pay equity in your organization.
Polish Up Your Hiring Practices
The compensation offered for a position should be based on the job description and required duties. Regardless of the position, the candidate’s gender or other personal traits should have no bearing on pay.
To ensure pay equity, make these adjustments to your hiring practices:
- Cease reliance on salary histories. In some states, it’s illegal for employers to inquire about previous salaries. It’s not a cool question anyway because what an applicant made before has nothing to do with whether he or she can do the job. Further, such a question perpetuates gender-based pay discrimination by helping to suppress wages as workers progress through jobs. So, when you post a job opening, first set the salary. That will be what the person you hire will make, regardless of salary history, race, or gender.
- Remove gender-biased terms from your job descriptions and titles. Lose any gender-specific references or pronouns, and instead emphasize work requirements and experience. For instance, if you’re seeking a “foreman,” you may get fewer female applicants, and females who don’t have such experience may be offered a smaller salary due to a perceived lack of experience, even if the woman is hired. Furthermore, there are females who have supervisory and management experience, even in fields such as construction or manufacturing. That’s what you really want – right?
- Eliminate discrimination from screening questions. It’s a fact that some screening questions, perhaps unwittingly, discriminate against applicants who are female or of color, resulting in lower salaries – if they’re even hired. For example, if you open a job to candidates who have degrees in engineering or economics, you may not get as many applicants from diverse backgrounds and you may miss out on top-shelf talent. By contrast, jobs open to those with math or business degrees may garner you a more diverse field of candidates who will likely have similar skill sets. Further, you won’t throw cold water on female applicants by requiring education in traditionally male-dominated fields.
It’s also a good idea to focus on the skills needed rather than the industry. That way, you’ll get lots of solid, skilled candidates from more diverse backgrounds. A company-wide pay equity audit will bear this out.
Assess Your Organization’s Culture
It’s true: before you can correct equal pay, you need to fix any structural issues that are hurting your company culture. For example, if all your top managers are white males, that doesn’t exactly convey you value a diverse workforce. To ensure pay equity, even if your culture tends to lean more toward one race or gender, find an executive sponsor to support equal pay. You should also provide data that shows how fair pay promotes retention, lowers the chance of being sued, and helps the bottom line. In addition, you should include women in hiring decisions. If all your hiring managers are males, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting.
Review Your Employees’ Pay
After you’ve gotten rid of pay inequity upon hiring and have a sponsor to back you on pay issues, you need to run that pay equity analysis. Doing so will reveal any inequities that need fixing. As you scour data, ask yourself questions such as: “Why is 90% of the wait staff female, and most shift leaders are male?” “Why is John earning more than Lisa when they’re both handling home care and Lisa is licensed in nursing?”
And that’s how you achieve pay equity in your organization.
