How Your Organization Can Lead On Equal Pay

We’ve come a long way in America as far as fighting against discrimination and accepting all. And yet, even today, studies show that women earn 77 percent of the pay men do, and minorities earn even less than that.

This month, President Barack Obama announced two executive orders he will enact that look to curb that problem, but even his most loyal supporters don’t believe it will fix it completely. The truth is, if there is ever going to be real progress on this issue, it is going to have to come from organizations themselves.

So how do you go about that? How do you create a culture where the emphasis is on the merits of the individual and not their race or gender? Well, here are a few keys:

This is where it all starts. When you put out a job, give all the candidates a real chance by using a program likeVoiceGlance, which gives valuable insight into each candidate’s talents and skills. This not only is the fairest way to do it, it is the best for the organization as well because it ensures you’re making the right hire. The goal should be to match a set of skills to a position, no matter how that person gained those set of skills, and certainly not on the race or gender of the applicant.

This sounds crazy, right? Well, studies show it isn’t. If people feel like they are underpaid, they are most likely going to leave you for another job or – even worse – do nothing and justify it by their perceived low salary. If you ask them what they want and you can give it, within reason, their boosted morale will easily justify some extra expense.

This should be done in the applicant-screening process as well, which is achieved easiest by using a program likeVoiceGlance. Rather than put out a salary, see what your applicants want, and then you can compare and contrast both their skills and their desired salary. But the last thing you want to do is to hire someone for a salary they are not going to be happy with, which just means that they’ll leave you soon or demand a raise.

This is easier said than done, but we lay out the blueprint on how to do that here. But if you can tie promotions and salary increases directly to some objective measure of an employee’s performance, that’s a great way to avoid discrimination – even unintentional discrimination – in the workplace.

Conclusion: We believe that most change happens on the grassroots level, and that includes the very noble goal of equal pay for equal work. By moving away from the same old way of doing things – which will just produce the same old results – and instead tying employee hiring and compensation to objective measures, you’ll not only be benefiting your organization, you’ll be benefiting everyone.