Pay Equity Phase Two: The Assessment
You know about the importance of pay equity, especially right now. You’ve prepared for the pay equity journey ahead. Now what? It’s time to get into your data. We are moving from general concepts to tactics now.
In this chapter, I will walk you through the process of completing a pay equity assessment. This is the first step in your pay equity journey because a pay equity assessment quickly identifies pain points for you. Then we need a clear picture of the biggest pain points before we begin addressing them.
I created the pay equity assessment model I’m about to guide you through in 2018, and I’ve adjusted it over the years for my clients. More complicated models exist that offer extensive statistics and reports, and I find that my own model offers similar guidance with much less confusion.
This model is also accessible to anyone with access to your organization’s pay data and can be used at the team level as well as the organization level. Sometimes nonprofits do not give pay data to supervisors. This needs to change. As a supervisor, you need to understand why your employees are paid at certain rates and how they can change their pay. If you cannot, then you will be left with a lack of trust from your employees and difficulties in recruiting new employees. It is common for applicants now, especially younger ones, to ask how your company is addressing the documented wage gap for gender and/or race and ethnicity. Hiring managers need to know how to answer.
Most small to medium sized nonprofits in the United States do not have a full-time human resources practitioner to lead this work. I encourage you to find peers in your nonprofit who can help you with the pay equity assessment and discuss what comes up in your results. Block some time in your calendar each week to make progress on this work.
We are going to follow one Operations Director - Issa - through her process of completing a pay equity assessment with my help through The Pay Equity Collective, an online membership community. Although Issa is a fictional character, the Pay Equity Collective is a real, live community available to you. If you would like to join or learn more, go to loftispartners.com.
Issa’s Pay Equity Story
Issa works at a small nonprofit based in Newland, NC. They have 25 employees and a $3 million annual operating budget. Though HR is only part of Issa’s job, she has been concerned by the number of people leaving the organization and the lack of qualified candidates in the hiring process. Since HR is out of her comfort zone, Issa joined the Pay Equity Collective to receive professional guidance from Sally and peer support from others like her.
Step #1 - Access the Pay Data
At Issa’s first workshop within the Pay Equity Collective, she learns how to complete a pay equity assessment. She gathers her organization’s data with as much demographic information as possible into a spreadsheet so she can sort the information by distinct factors. Sally recommends using the following columns: name, position, level (ex. Coordinator), department, classification (Ex. Full-time), hire date, birth date, gender, race/ethnicity, annualized salary, and geographic location. Issa names this tab: Step 1 - The Data, so she can keep track of her work.
Issa’s organization uses a payroll system so she can easily access most of this information, and she adds a tenure column (hire date-today’s date). Here’s the start of Issa’s spreadsheet:
Example 1 - The Pay Data Spreadsheet
Name
Position
Level
Department
Classification
Tenure
You can access the Pay Data Spreadsheet inside the Pay Equity Collective FOR FREE at www.loftispartners.com.
While building the spreadsheet, Issa notices that her organization only has two gender options. Based on her inclusion & accessibility training, Issa knows that more gender options need to be added. Issa opens her notebook and starts a To Do list:
Add more gender options to our new hire forms. Maybe trans, non-binary, and prefer not to share? Need to discuss with the leadership team.
Issa reviews the pay data on this tab (Step 1 - The Pay Data) and records any initial thoughts. In her mind, she asks: Do I see any discrepancies? Do any of these salaries stick out?
Ready for more? You can read the full chapter when my new pay equity book releases Summer 2024.