By Rainbow Kirby
It really comes down to transparency and accountability. If you want everyone to be accountable for making change, they all need to know what they’re solving. It’s great if the CEO knows. It’s great if the board knows. It’s great if the senior management team knows. But at the end of the day, you need to make sure that the entire company understands.
– Sara Wechter, Global Head of Human Resources at Citi
Once you have analyzed your company’s raw pay gap using the Advancing Equality CalculatorTM, you will need to take some important steps to enlist company-wide support. It begins with transparency, self-examination, planning and commitment.
Here are 5 ways to get started:
- Make it a priority for leadership. Show them your insights and determine, together, how you will both communicate the information and commit to addressing the gaps, whether that means conducting a deeper audit, reviewing recruitment practices or setting specific compensation goals to close the gap.
- Launch a company-wide transparency initiative. Evaluating your baseline pay gap might reveal disappointing results. You might be hesitant to share the information with your employees. Organizational change requires a holistic commitment and that means everyone needs to be rowing in the same direction, towards the same goal.
While some national governments require annual wage reporting for businesses over a certain size, most do not. It is up to individual leadership teams to take the plunge and be open with their staff and stakeholders. Transparency is absolutely essential to accelerating change.
- Create feedback loops. Engaging your employees in the process also means opening up pathways to receive their feedback and for you to share updates on progress. This type of communication is critical and may include:
- Regular pay gap progress reports
- Regular company surveys and/or town hall meetings to discuss progress on pay equity
- Review your hiring policies, benefits program and company culture for underlying issues. Examine existing practices to identify those that are contributing to disparities for women in the workplace. Questions to help you get started:
- Are you recruiting from a diverse enough pool of candidates? How might you adjust hiring efforts to ensure new hires do not widen your raw pay gap, but rather help close it?
- How healthy is your management pipeline – are your policies helping women move past the “messy middle”, or middle management?
- Do your benefits address the needs of families and caregivers? Is your workplace culture inclusive?
5. Elevate gender equality as a company priority. Bake equity into everything you do. Once you’ve committed to closing the pay gap, take additional steps to ensure women are heard and regarded everywhere, all the time. If you are convening an event, ensure a diverse group of speakers participate (our Speaker Equity Assessor can help!). Ensure that your internal meetings are equitable and everyone can be heard. Put your women leaders forward as experts.
Get started with the Advancing Equality Calculator now.
