Pay Equity in the Age of Technology: Navigating the New Landscape

In the past, employees were discouraged from discussing their salaries and compensation. Today, that discretion is harder to maintain as a new generation of tools and employees are providing increased transparency. Crowdsourced compensation data is easily found online and has substantially increased in volume over the past three years, and younger employees are more likely to share pay details with their colleagues and peers. This has fostered a new environment where talking about pay at work is not uncommon. What’s more, there are also growing legal considerations around pay transparency.

So, what is an organization to do to address these changes and this move toward more transparency? This session will provide a comprehensive overview of issues and solutions from several perspectives. The analytical perspective is often about understanding risks, root causes and solutions. The legal perspective is often about shaping a story that minimizes exposure risk. The compensation perspective is often about deciding how to implement pay transparency and pay fairness in the long run. Diagnosis of the current situation is one thing — but it is equally important to understand and address the deeper implications of pay equity and fairness.

A team of consultants and HR Practitioners will discuss all these perspectives with the goal of highlighting broader change management implications surrounding pay transparency and pay equity, including:

• What can you do to tighten up and properly document your job architecture?
• How can you implement tighter compensation guidelines in a time when your hiring managers ask for more flexibility?
• How can you balance internal fairness concerns with external pay pressures?
• What is the best way to communicate Pay Equity results internally and perhaps even externally? And why would you even do that?
• There are budget implications when it comes to fixing pay gaps: How to gain stakeholder support? What to do if there just isn’t enough money?
• Can you navigate pay adjustment conversations successfully? How? Who should you talk to?
• Is there a good/easy way to balance pay strategy concerns with legal concerns?

Leveraging insights from 100+ recent pay equity analyses and first-hand experience dealing with these problems in house, Stefan Gaertner of Aon with Nick Rettenmyer of Tableau will present trends and practices from organizations that are “getting it right.” These include utilizing research and data, determining what “things” you are paying for, and identifying opportunities to better align what you are paying for with what you think you should be paying for.

While technology and information-sharing have changed the landscape around pay equity, taking certain steps to address issues before they arise is easier for companies to do than they may realize. Attendees will walk away with this session empowered to address pay equity in a lasting way for their organizations.