4 Steps for Helping Your Company Meet Your Equality Goals

I recently wrote about why companies need an equality health checkup, and how change won’t happen without having clear action steps to get there and accountability measures in place for meeting diversity goals. At The Female Quotient, we’ve mapped out four equality health vitals that companies can use to gauge where they currently are in their equality journey. Here are some examples of what concrete action steps might look like for each of the four vitals (parity, advancement, culture and leadership).

Parity

The first vital is parity, which includes equal pay. I believe the biggest impact for leveling the playing field here is to close the gender wage gap. It is 2018 and women still don’t get equal pay for equal work: in general, the average woman earns 80 cents for every dollar that the average white man earns. The gap is even greater for minorities: For example, black women make 63 cents on the dollar, while Latinas make only 54 cents.

At The Female Quotient, we sensationalize the pay gap in our lounges by selling candy for $1 to men and 80 cents to women just to show how silly it is.

The 20% gap adds up. According to the National Women’s Law Center, a 20-year old woman working full time will lose more than $418,000 over a 40-year career compared to a man—minority women will lose more than $1 million over their lifetime. If we do not close the gap, women will have less overall wealth, less money for retirement and will continue to be the ones opting out of their careers for caregiving responsibilities since men make more money on average.

At the rate we’re going, it will take 217 years to close the wage gap, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report. I don’t know about you, but I definitely can’t wait that long. This shouldn’t be so complicated. Let’s start with the premise of equal pay for equal work.

Some ways to close the gap are:

1.     Do not base current pay on past salary, or else women’s wages will never catch up.

2.     Figure out where the inequity is, set goals and have metrics for accountability. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff famously spent $3 million to close the company’s wage gap. It’s a smart economic move, since closing the wage gap could add $2.1 trillion to the US economy, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report.

3.     Have a diverse talent pool and diverse hiring team. You can fill the pipeline with diverse candidates, but if your hiring team isn’t also diverse, you will likely end up with more of the same, since people tend to hire others who think and act like them.

Advancement

The second vital is pathways to advancement. Mentorship, sponsorship and coaching are all key for helping women rise up into leadership positions. Let’s stop fixing the women. We’re not broken. Let’s also coach the men. We should educate both men and women on the new lens needed to navigate the workplace today.

I was moderating a panel at a big bank recently with the male CEO and male chairman. I asked the two leaders if they would tell a female colleague that she looked nice. They both said, ‘Of course we would.’ Then I asked the audience of about 400 women how many of them would be uncomfortable if a male colleague told them that they looked nice, and about 10 millennials raised their hands.

We talk about the Golden Rule, which is “do unto others as you’d have done unto yourself.” Today we need the Platinum Rule, which is “do unto others as they’d want done unto themselves,” because what might be good for me, might not be good for you.

Instead of reporting someone, say, “That makes me uncomfortable.” Let’s educate each other, and create awareness for where we are and where we need to go. This will go a long way towards building respect in the workplace. The best way to advance is to create an open society of sharing.

Culture

The third vital is culture. Putting the right policies in place can help level the playing field.

One policy that I believe can help minimize hiring bias is mandatory parental leave. Think about what may potentially go through a hiring manager’s mind when interviewing a woman of childbearing age versus a man:

1. She will be out for a few months and he won’t be able to replace her.

2. She won’t be able to work late hours.

3. She won’t be able to travel as much.

Who would you choose? As a hiring manager with time, money and resources in mind, I would probably choose the man. Is this an unconscious bias or conscious?

And what’s it called when two men have a baby together? This is an example of how we need to create a new lexicon, because the concept of maternity leave needs to evolve to better fit what workplaces and society look like today.

To eliminate this challenge, I believe that mandated parental leave for both men and women will help to minimize the motherhood penalty. Studies show that men may be hesitant to take parental leave due to stigma or fear of being penalized at work. However, when fathers do take leave, women can return to work sooner—which may benefit a woman’s pay and chances for promotion.

Also, the more that men see other men taking parental leave, the more it will become the norm. Paternity leave can also encourage men to more equally shoulder the caregiving responsibilities: Studies find that fathers who take at least two weeks of paternity leave or more are likely to continue being involved in child-caring activities, such as feeding and diapering.

Leadership

The fourth and last equality health vital is leadership, because those at the top who are walking the talk and leading by example set the tone for the rest of the organization.

Setting goals, communicating those goals and holding leaders accountable are all important. Also key for building truly inclusive workplaces is having leaders with an equality mindset, where we’re able to put ourselves in another’s shoes. Organizations who have leaders embodying the purpose of equality will bring others along with them.

Take the CEO of easyJet, Johan Lundgren, who asked for a 4.6% pay cut to match that of his female predecessor to show that the company is taking its equality initiatives seriously. He’s setting an example for employees of all levels that the equality health of the organization is more important than his personal gains. When purpose meets passion, we are unstoppable.

Being better is a choice. Having an equality mindset is a choice. I choose equality. Do you?