Introduction  #

With pay equity appearing constantly on social media and in media headlines, organizations in the monitoring and evaluation industry need to tackle this issue to gain M&E professionals’ trust and be in compliance with the law. From all perspectives, paying employees equally and fairly is difficult. Each employee holds different titles, experiences, and education levels, so there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this ongoing problem. However, there is one thing for certain. Wage rates should never be based on discrimination against women, people of color, or other unequal factors in workplaces as it is now time to close the racial & gender pay gap once and for all.

Here’s how to handle pay equity issues when the need arises:

How to Handle Pay Equity Issues #

Once you’ve identified the need for ensuring wage equality, your organization’s human resource department should create, implement, and analyze a transparent compensation plan to comply with the law, but also to protect your monitoring and evaluation professionals and employer branding. Compensation management is no easy task since unfair wages can impact an organization’s efficiency, morale, and productivity. Through the earnings gap, there won’t be an incentive for employees to work hard as they will feel as if it doesn’t matter as there aren’t any fair labor standards within the industry. 

This is why it is essential to choose the right compensation plan, software, and team to manage the salaries, progress, and benefits of each employee across the organization. To begin, start by analyzing your employee population, conducting pay equity analysis, implementing fair compensation practices, training honest decision makers, and monitoring pay equity for the years to come.

Step 1: Get Visibility on your Employee Population #

When developing any compensation practices, it is imperative to analyze your employee population. In order to create a comprehensive report, measure the demographics of your employee population, such as race, age, and gender, and the salary and turnover rates among those demographics. This will allow your HR team to fully grasp where your organization currently stands in the equal employment opportunity sector.

This can more easily be done when all your employee data is in one place and consistent across the organization. Centralized data allows for a single source of truth and easier reporting. Centralized data hubs can be achieved through HR platforms. This way, your organization will have more organization and put the extra time into reassuring that there isn;t any employment discrimination. 

Once you have gathered the employee population metrics and other necessary information, your human resource department should begin conducting a pay equity analysis.

Step 2: Conduct a Pay Equity Analysis #

A pay equity analysis is the practice of investigating pay rates in your organization and comparing them to demographic factors, such as race, sex, age, and other criteria. To start conducting your pay equity analysis, begin by understanding why the pay rates were given previously and how they were calculated. This can help your HR department get to the bottom of pay inequality present in your workplace.

Once you have seen how your organization previously calculated pay rates and gathered the necessary data from your employees, compare your company’s salaries and job responsibilities to other companies similar in industry and size of yours. This will not only help your organization identify wage inequality, but will give your company a competitive advantage in compensation when taking action to adjust salaries.

Step 3: Implement a Transparent Compensation Practice #

Since over two-thirds of potential M&E employees stated that they would not interview at an organization that they perceive has a wage gap, your company needs to actively reveal the efforts HR is taking to implement transparent compensation practices. Even if a company is speculated to have discrimination in the workplace, your talent pool will take a huge hit. 

One way to create a transparent compensation practice is to define your organization’s roles and levels. You can create a chart that shows which roles and levels are equal to each salary. This will standardize salaries amongst your employees and put an end to any pay inequality which may take place.

By creating a transparent compensation strategy, M&E professionals will feel appreciated for their time and effort at your organization. It may also boost morale among current employees and reduce turnover rates drastically.

Step 4: Train Decision Makers #

If companies or institutions base less compensation decisions on other factors besides a role and level chart, your human resource department needs to be adequately trained to do so. If your decision makers are biased and lack current pay trend knowledge, your organization could lose out on top recruits and loyal employees.

In order to train your HR department and hiring managers into being the best decision makers they can be, educate them on the compensation strategy your organization has created and how to document all decisions. Lack of proper documentation can lead to potential issues in pay inequality and may put your organization at fault legally. This will also come with a decrease in people feeling comfortable with the organization as they see this lack of equal-rights as the main image of the company. 

Step 5: Continuously Monitor Pay Equity #

As you train decision makers, create unbiased compensation strategies, and conduct pay equity analysis, make sure you continuously monitor pay equity to tackle salary gaps. Revisit frequently to address compensation based on inflation, promotions, and current job skill demands in the workforce.

When monitoring and evaluation specialists feel adequately paid for their work, they will become more likely to stay at your organization and be more productive which will save your company thousands in recruiting, training, and onboarding costs that have to be paid every time there is a new employee. Transparent wage practices will also keep your workplace strong, diverse, and inclusive. 

Key Takeaways #

Transparent compensation strategies are extremely important for every organization in the monitoring and evaluation industry in this day and age of wage discrimination. Implementing sound compensation plans will not only protect you from discriminatory lawsuits, but also will boost M&A specialists productivity and give your company a comparable-worth in pay equality and inclusion. 
One of the easiest ways to address and monitor pay equity disparity is by centralizing M&A specialists data into an HR platform. It will help your organization to collect accurate salary and performance data, and compare it to current market trends.