Pay equity goes largely ignored.
Pushed out of the forefront, it seems that businesses today can no longer pay males and females differently. It’s unreasonable that there is still a systemic problem in our society over equal pay for work of equal value, but the research says it’s true: women in Canada get paid 74.5 cents for every one dollar a male makes. The research also shows that our traditional reasons to justify this gap (that women have less education and work part time) does not hold water anymore.
According to a recent article in the Globe and Mail on global pay equity gaps, Canada is in the top ten of the world. This is not a good list to be top on; out of 34 countries, Canada rates seven in the world for highest percentage of wage discrepancy between the genders.
Click here to read the article.
Canada has to do better and proactively change our compensation practices. On a positive note, some provinces are aware that pay equity gaps are a problem that need to be addressed. On March 8, 2017, all parties voted unanimously to support to resolve the pay equity gap in Newfoundland and Labrador. Women in Newfoundland and Labrador earn an average of 66 cents to the male dollar of earnings.
Click here to read the article.
All organizations have to ensure they are meeting any pay equity legislation in their jurisdiction. Pay equity is closely tied to an organization’s design of their compensation system. Organizations have to ask themselves, would the design of our compensation system stand up to a pay equity due diligence test? If the organization has not completed a comprehensive job evaluation process it would be a very hard argument to defend.
Discussion Questions
- Please address each subsection of this question. Why is conducting job evaluations so important to
- HR in general?
- An organization’s compensation system?
- Pay equity laws?
- What are some of the differences when conducting a general job evaluation as compared to a pay equity evaluation?