Learn more about how the Trakstar platform is revolutionizing talent management through integrated, flexible solutions.
6 min read
It’s quite shocking that women are still underpaid compared to men. It’s a problem that is deeply ingrained in our society and burdens even the most talented and accomplished females. Fortunately, more and more companies are saying enough and creating plans for eliminating their pay gaps.
In this guide, you’ll learn how your company can uncover and resolve pay disparities so every employee is treated fairly and equally.
There are plenty of statistics that shine a light on the severity of the gender pay gap in the United States. One of the most telling is women make about 79 percent of what their male counterparts earn. To put things more in perspective, an individual female stands to lose out on nearly a half million dollars throughout the course of her career. Even with growing awareness around this issue, progress is slow. Gender income inequality won’t be eliminated from our society until 2059 at the current pace.
Some people question the validity of these statistics and even claim the gender pay gap is a myth. That’s an overstatement. The data overwhelmingly points to income inequality being a real problem.
Even if you question the accuracy of these commonly-shared statistics, there are a few gender pay gap facts we should all be able to agree on:
Every employee deserves a fair salary. Workplace equality should be your company’s primary motivation for closing its wage gap. But doing the right thing also has other advantages:
Closing your company’s gender pay gap starts with determining who is underpaid and how it happened. Assemble a team of women and men with different professional backgrounds and assign them the task of identifying what internal factors contribute to income inequality. Include people from HR, legal, finance, and other departments so your team members have diverse skills and perspectives. The team should explore the following areas of your company:
Reviewing the salary of every employee is the most logical place to start. If your company uses modern HR software, it should be easy for your team to segment salaries by position, job level, gender and a number of other factors. They can use this data to identify trends, as well as outlying salaries that are especially low.
Your team should also look at compensation beyond salary, such as benefits, bonuses and overtime given to each employee.
Senior employees have the greatest influence over promotions and raises. And males tend to dominate the upper levels of most companies.
Your team should review the balance of men and women at the different management levels in your company. If there are less women the further up the ladder you go, it’s a sign there is a systemic problem.
Your team can learn a lot about how compensation is determined by looking at your company’s hiring process. For example, a female new hire can end up with unfair pay if your company makes an offer based on her previous wages or aggressively negotiates over salary.
A thorough analysis of these areas of the company can help your team uncover all the different factors that contribute to an internal pay gap.
Once the factors contributing to your company’s pay gap have been identified, you’ll know exactly what needs to be resolved. Some problems will need to be addressed right away and others will take longer to sort out. Here are some tips for breaking the glass ceiling in your company:
Closing your internal pay gap will take a lot of planning and patience. Be sure your company doesn’t lose sight of the goal and lives up to its commitments.
America’s gender pay gap has lived on for far too long but an increasing number of companies are stepping up and committing to resolving their pay discrepancies. Convince the leaders of your company to do the right thing and join the fight for equal pay for all.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out our blog post “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: What Will it Take for Your Company?”
Applicant Tracking
Candidate Sourcing
Interview Scheduling
Offer Management
Collaborative Hiring
Reports
Careers Site Management
Trakstar is a multi-product HR software provider helping organizations put the people back in people management. Develop and align your staff through better recruiting and applicant tracking, performance management, and learning management. For a more integrated solution to talent management, check out our website and request a live demonstration today.
© 2024 Trakstar