Tackle Healthcare Gender Equal Pay Compliance confidently: Unleashing the Potential of HR Technology

All Organisations in the EU are subject to the newly approved EU Equal Pay Directive which requires companies from big to small to demonstrate and justify that they are working towards decreasing Gender Pay Gap and pay fairly based on Performance and other relevant and fair criteria.

However, the WHO conducted research in 2020, producing a final report in 2022 with shocking results show that Women working in healthcare earn on average 24% less than their male peers and face a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, a joint report by the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization has found

The analysis, which looked at data from 54 countries across all geographic and income regions, found a raw gender pay gap of around 20%, which jumped to 24% when factors such as age, education, and working time were considered. Gender pay gaps also tended to be wider in higher pay categories, where men were over-represented, while women were over-represented in the lower pay categories.

The authors said the findings highlighted those women, who accounted for 67% of the global health and care workforce in 2020, were underpaid and undervalued.

The analysis also looks at the factors that are driving the sector’s gender pay gaps. Differences in age, education, working time and the difference in the participation of men and women in the public or private sectors only address part of the problem. The reasons why women are less paid than men with similar labour market profiles in the health and care sector across the world remain largely unexplained by labour market factors, the report says.

It also finds a wide variation in gender pay gaps in different countries, suggesting that pay gaps in the sector are not inevitable and that more can be done to close these gaps. Within countries, gender pay gaps tend to be wider in higher pay categories, where men are over-represented. Women are over-represented in the lower pay categories.

The Business?Impact:

AI cannot yet replace care workers. The Healthcare sector is struggling to hire people with the right skills in a highly compliant environment, where training and certifications come at a high cost. Paired with the churn caused by stress and burnout.

How much longer can we continue to create issues on top of issues?

There are a range of disadvantages that impact wage progression for mothers. Research shows women’s income decreases because they reduce their working hours to balance childcaring responsibilities more than men. Women also face biases around parenthood, such as the notion that working mothers are less committed to their jobs, which can inhibit career progression. Meanwhile, men are sometimes paid more after having children.

As we detail below, the opportunity gap widens as women progress through their careers?—?with 60 percent of women over the age of 45 occupying individual contributor roles compared to 45 percent of men in the same age group.

The HR strategy impact:

Gender Pay Gap, especially in a sector where female are still the key workers and carers, can only contribute to employee (dis)engagement, toxic culture and even higher illness rates.

Though benefits can support this to a certain extent, a wellness app will not resolve burnout and without the right compensation, any worker will spend more time looking for an exit strategy than supporting your business to thrive.

Men still earn more than women, according to data gathered by the BBC.

What can your organisation do to become compliant?

Little is known yet about the penalties the EU will apply. Together with the ‘Where do I start?’ question we are getting from HR leaders we are speaking to, it is becoming clear that procrastination is still present on a matter that will likely take 4 to 12 months to evaluate and execute if a good strategy is not in place.

There are various ways of conducting an Audit, to get started and understand the dimensions of any gaps and remediation activities.

A manual audit can be challenging, will remove teams from their daily operations and can become a needle in a haystack.

The simplest way to get started is by running a Pilot.

Take a sample of data, using one or 2 key positions where there is more employee churn. Start by looking at criteria such as tenure, gender, location, performance and pay (both compensation and benefits).

Identify gaps. Determine if these discrepancies can be easily justified and are properly documented.

Establish a plan of action to address other employee populations.

Determine if there is a need to redesign core HR data such as job architecture, positions, associated skills, training, and compensation.

What if a manual Audit is not possible?

For organisations of +1,000 employees, it can be challenging to perform this transformation fully manually.

Working with a consultancy to support this analysis and using in-house tools to design reporting and analytics with the data required for analysis, is achievable. However, it is also costly and time-consuming.

What HR technology is available and how can it accelerate your transformation?

We set out to speak to software vendors in the space and realised that some have great capabilities of supporting the gap analysis.

So once you have run internally your pilot, auditing a sample of the population where today you have identified possible issues like churn, you can benefit from an HR technology platform to give you an overview of the As-Is state of your pay gap by gender and location.

One of the vendors we have found that does this beautifully is Trusaic.

Trusaic offers comprehensive solutions to maximize compliance and minimize risk across pay equity, diversity, and tax.

A big part of their mission is to achieve Pay Equity and a more diverse workforce.

Their advanced Analytics software is supported by a team of specialised data experts.

Amongst their robust analytics tools there is one Product we have found could be an incredible departure point for analysis and to obtain a clear picture of the pay gaps potentially existing, using different criteria. This award-winning DEI Product is called PayParity.

Before setting out to hire a consultancy and delving into compensation ranges or benefits strategy, before fully implementing the solution, PayParity can help you run a full prototype of the desired future state.

By simply uploading your core data to PayParity you will be able to see the overview of your current state, by creating a project for a region or a specific job family and understand if there are any remediation actions and which.

PayParity will save you time in analysis and transformation, to become truly compliant. The value of documenting your compensation and benefits with the potential to add comments and justifications, directly in Trusaic’s interface, will enable you to be audit-ready.

For support with getting started with the pilot audit, feel free to reach out to Futturwork for a free session.

About the Author

I am a seasoned HR technologist dedicated to driving HR transformation on a global scale for leading organizations. My expertise lies in providing strategic guidance to both IT and HR teams, helping them craft the right combination of People, Teams and HR Tech Solutions. My focus is on enhancing user experiences, operating models and maximizing technology return on investment.