One of the very fortunate aspects of my day job is a CEO who is open to different perspectives. This matters to me because I think so much of what we have been led to believe works in organizations is just not true, particularly when it comes to HR practices. As part of an effort to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive organization, we undertook a pay equity assessment. In the past, I have used unadjusted pay equity assessments to determine whether we were paying fairly and equitable. An unadjusted pay equity assessment compares the average and/or median pay in an organization for specific groups of people. An adjusted pay equity assessment measures the pay gap after adjusting for various factors such as type of occupation, education and experience that might influence the pay gap. Both can be useful and important when understanding how different groups, particularly underrepresented groups, are compensated. This year, with the assistance of Pay Analytics, experts in pay equity assessment, I completed an adjusted pay equity assessment, which highlight pay gaps for women and women of colour. This means that women, when controlling for other factors such as the type of role, were paid about 7% less than men.
With the support of the CEO, I set out to correct this pay gap. So far, so good. What came next was probably predictable but always surprising. It is hard to find a leader who thinks, or at least would admit to thinking that people should not be paid differently due to their gender or any other demographic identity. But like most aspects of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, conceptual belief and support starts to fall apart when actual behaviour change is required. I met with a fair amount of resistance as I tried to adjust specific salaries to ensure equity. Most of this resistance was not about performance, but about, well, the leader’s ego. They ‘knew’ their people better than I did.Didn’t I trust them not to be unbiased? Well, actually, no. I don’t trust them to be unbiased, just like I don’t trust myself or anybody else to be unbiased. More importantly, a pay equity assessment isn’t about an individual leader. It is about a system. Arguing about whether specific people are biased or discriminatory misses the big picture. Systems are biased. A pay equity assessment looks at the organization, a system, to determine whether people are paid unfairly.
Our good intentions as individuals don’t really matter when it comes to bias. My values may be vehemently opposed to inequity, inequality, discrimination and prejudice. But that doesn’t mean I am not biased and it definitely doesn’t mean I am not contributing to the systemic prejudice. Ironically, many of the managers I was working with, felt the pay equity adjustments were not fair, even though the changes meant that at least temporarily, we reduced the pay gap to less than 1%. Fortunately, this sense of fairness meant we had common ground and shared goals. Most decided to accept the changes, although some very reluctantly. It is a good thing I believe we just have to get a little better every day to make progress.