The Pay Equity Problem Most Organizations Are Sitting On
Across North America, pay transparency legislation is expanding rapidly. In Canada, the Pay Equity Act now covers federally regulated employers. Across US states, pay transparency requirements are multiplying. In the UK, gender pay gap reporting is mandatory for organizations over 250 employees.
The underlying assumption behind all of this legislation is the same: left unexamined, pay structures develop inequities over time. And research consistently confirms this is true.
Not because organizations intend to pay unfairly. Because pay decisions get made in isolation, over years, by different managers, without a unifying framework. The result is a pay structure that looks random when you finally look at it as a whole, because it was built randomly, one hire and one salary negotiation at a time.