4 Steps to Develop a Gender Pay Gap Action Plan and Support Women at the Top
Nicola Skorko ??
Helping Women in Telecoms Get Promoted and Become Stand out Leaders, Whilst Staying True to Themselves | Trailblazer 5 Places Jan| DEI Report & Plan | Equity Workshop | 000's global client | English Channel Swimmer ??♀?
Women continue to be disproportionately affected in the workplace compared to their male-counterparts.?
On average women are paid less than their male colleagues for the same work.
They have fewer promotional and career advancement opportunities.
They are critically underrepresented at the board and executive leadership levels.?
They leave the workplace in larger numbers, a trend which has been exacerbated by the fact women bore the brunt of the pandemic… taking on extra challenges at work and at home.?
With the 136 year pay gap we’re facing hanging heavy over organisations there’s one tool helping them tackle the gender gap in their business…
Gender pay gap action plans.
All organisations of a certain size are required each year to develop and share a gender pay gap action plan as part of their annual report.?
Luckily these action plans are becoming more of a key focus and standard practice for organisations everywhere.
It shows tangible steps of their commitment and investment to closing the gender pay gap, rather than just something that is just paid lip service.
Gender pay gap action plans have many benefits for organisations, aside from the obvious of supporting women in their workforce, they improve shareholder and consumer opinion and positively impact share price.?
It’s more important than ever for companies to show they’re socially conscious and make sure they’re actively supporting and working towards gender parity.??
For women as individuals, especially those in male dominated industries like telecoms and tech, gender pay gap action plans are hugely powerful.?
In many cases, and the more senior you are, you are likely to be the only woman in the room.?
An effective gender pay gap action plan helps your organisation to truly understand what is going on with the experiences and gender pay gap you’re facing. To know where you are starting from to where you want to get to, your point A to your point B.
It’s a sign to your employers, the shareholders and the public that you and your organisation have a commitment to take serious steps to tackle the gender pay gap.
But what is the process to get started?
Here are 4 steps, based on a report by the government equalities office , that need to be taken when developing a gender pay gap action plan.
Step 1 - Set up ways of monitoring information
The first thing you need to do is analyse your data and get a snapshot and understanding of where your key problems and challenges lie.?
This helps you to get under the skin of why your organisation's gender pay gap exists… Are there certain types of work and roles that are more male dominated? Are there levels where the number of women really drops off?
Unfortunately, in many cases companies see a pyramid effect, especially within telecoms and tech. At the more junior levels, the gender balance is usually 40:60 or even 50:50. However, as you move up through the organisation the percentage of women really drops. To where you get to the very top-level roles, the CEO and MD roles, which are less than 5% are women.
Diagnosing problems like this that are driving your gender pay gap helps you to put a more effective plan in place before you start taking steps and making investments.
To start the process of analysing data, you need to introduce processes and systems that will help you monitor information and diagnose what's going on within your organisation. You need to look at every stage in an employee life cycle, from recruitment to exit interviews and tenure. From length of service to management and executive levels.
Look at the quantitative data and the numbers, but also qualitative feedback from your employees…
From here you can start creating your plan of actions. Work as an organisation and co-create to make it easier to implement the strategy company wide and help it become business as usual.
It doesn't fall on the shoulders of one person. No one person can drive this change.
As a team you need to work together on introducing positive change into everyday working practices.
Step 2 - Consult and engage
Once you have analysed your data and identified some evidence driven actions based on what you have learnt… it’s time to consult and engage.
Realistically, to get the budget and time to properly invest in the gender pay gap action plan, it requires support from senior levels.
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Not only is it important in terms of making the plan a strategic priority within the organisation, it also enforces it when the very senior level leadership are role modeling and supporting the strategy.
By consulting with other departments and areas of the business, it takes the commitment to a whole other level. Departments like HR can play a pivotal role in ensuring that senior leaders understand the meaning of the gender pay gap and the best actions to take.
When approaching them, it’s important to be highlighting case studies from other organisations and sharing what's working, what initiatives are changing things and having an impact on future and current leaders. What is making a real difference to organisations?
It’s also important to involve a wide range of stakeholders… that could be employees of different levels or representative bodies.
The framework and plan created won’t work without that engagement. It needs other people’s ideas, perspectives and innovations so that the framework of actions to start taking is co-created by everyone across the organisation. It means they’re based on what’s true and real to your particular organisation… and what will work to tackle it. Even companies in the same industry can suffer from vastly different issues.?
To be able to consult and engage, create some informal feedback sessions and surveys to engage with stakeholders and get that input. This isn’t just with one person, there is a wider community of people and employees to co-create the plan.?
Plus, the more involved, the more likely they will want to be involved in delivering it as well and that’s going to make the gender pay gap plan even more successful.?
Step 3 - Revise, assess and embed your action plan
For the plan to be effective, it needs to be allowed to evolve. Don’t create a framework and then be scared to move away from it.
It needs to be flexible and reflect the new data being monitored and evaluating the actions being taken.?
This is the stage to set some time bound targets and SMART objectives and appoint individuals in particular areas to drive the plan forward.
An important part of this is to ensure the actions decided on are embedded and practiced so the changes made to close that gender pay gap become part of the day-to-day, business as usual.
Assessing the impact and lessons being learnt and embedding the actions in working practices keeps the plan on track.?
Enforce it further and share back the data being monitored across the organisation and the stories of those benefiting and motivate others to keep taking on those actions that are driving the change.?
Step 4 - Allow enough time
Developing an effective action plan is an ongoing iterative process that will evolve over time. It's not just the one and done. It's something that takes time to set up and investigate, time to deliver on the actions and then even more time to look back on and reflect.
Actions will be tweaked, adapted or even changed completely and it’s important to make sure it’s accurate, refined and able to deliver on the ideas included.
Time is needed to look back and review progress as each action is taken, so that you can understand what issues are driving the gender pay gap and how the changes you’re making are helping to close it.?
You want to get people involved in the whole process and with initial research, analysis, drafting, consulting, engagement, feedback, refinement… it takes time to sign off.
Then, hopefully, it becomes business as usual. Like the DEI plan or the budget, it’s a process that evolves each and every year.?
Want to hear more?
I talked more about how to develop a gender pay gap action plan in an episode of the Women at the Top of Telecoms and Tech podcast.
Big love
Nic
P.S If you need my help supporting women in your organisation and closing the gender pay gap you can contact me below.
Career Strategist & Leadership Coach | Partnering to support your career transition | Learning & Development | Training | Facilitator |Outdoor Enthusiast
2 年I really appreciate this article, thank you for putting it together. I'm wondering a couple things- First, in terms of organizational turnover there have you seen/heard of challenges in keeping a plan going? (Since it does, as you address, take time.) Second, how much do you see already existing organizational culture play into the need for, ability to create, and ability to implement an action plan of this type? Is there a need to first address organizational cultural issues in order to creat an organization that would be willing to take the route of making a gender pay gap action plan?