Four Steps to Use People Analytics to Understand the Gender Pay Gap
Source | www.myhrfuture.com | Manpreet Randhawa
The Gender Pay Gap is an Onion
According to the World Economic Forum, on average women across the globe receive just 63% of their male counterpart’s wage, and this figure is even higher for BAME and other intersectional groups. Whilst this statistic is true in a broad sense, it is only through intelligent analytics, and building on your understanding of the true scale and specific drivers of workplace gender pay gaps, that it becomes a useful statistic.
We increasingly see leadership teams mark diversity as a priority issue, and we’ve heard about the business benefits of creating representative teams – see the McKinsey or Boston Consultancy Group reports, to name just a few. Companies are investing considerable sums to end pay inequality (see Salesforce’s recent actions). But how can we understand the core issues and drive change?
‘Discussing an organisations’ headline gender pay gap figure, whilst this may paint a general picture, can be a limiting and reductive approach to gender pay analysis.’
At Insight222’s peer meeting in Amsterdam, the Gapsquare team led the seminar ‘Gender Parity and Salary Equity: The Role of People Analytics’, an expansive session developing our understanding of figures like that 63% and looking at what they can teach us. Discussing an organisations’ headline gender pay gap figure, whilst this may paint a general picture, can be a limiting and reductive approach to gender pay analysis. For those of us with a genuine commitment to closing the gap, now is the time to step into analytics with your exploratory hat on.
Now for a metaphor that we have heard over the years which tells you a lot about the importance of breaking down data: Ladies and gentlemen, the gender pay gap, the equal pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap, all your basic pay parity issues – are onions. The best of us heading into the pay parity space, know that getting to the core of the issue requires understanding the layers that surround it.