What do I know about pay gaps?

Maybe you’ve seen my posts here on LinkedIn?

Maybe you’ve heard me on my podcast ‘Better Money Conversations?’

Or maybe you’ve no idea who I am at all?

Why do I keep talking to you about pay gaps?

My name is Michelle Gyimah, and I am a pay gaps consultant. Essentially, I work with organisations to help them understand why they have gender and ethnicity pay gaps and help them to create strategies to close them. So why me? Why is it that I'm doing this work? Well, like most things, I kind of fell into it by accident. I spent roughly 10 years at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. And it was there that I was first introduced to the concept of equal pay. It was a role that I took on knowing absolutely nothing about, but I soon realised that it was quite a difficult, thorny problem that a lot of organisations had. My role was to educate employers on what it was, and what they should be doing to ensure that they provided equal pay and were closing their pay gaps.

Now, I'll be frank with you. It was exciting but equally frustrating having to deal with organisations who really did not want to be having those conversations with you or wanted nothing to do with it whatsoever! But as luck would have it, we now have gender pay gap reporting and that meant for many organisations, this was something they simply had to get on board with. Naturally, that made my work a lot easier, however, as much as I enjoyed my job, I wanted to do more hands-on work. I wanted to be much more involved within organisations, so I decided to set up my own business called Equality Pays. So now I do this work with individual organisations, supporting them with their pay gap reporting and pay gap strategies.

One topic quite a lot of organisations come to me with is communicating all things pay with their employees – from pay equity and representation within an organisation to pay transparency, salaries, and negotiation. Talking about money and pay in the workplace is uncomfortable and hard and because it's uncomfortable and hard, many don't talk about it and actively avoid it! It’s become a taboo topic and shied away from but organisations must be ready for those conversations that employees quite rightly want to have so they can better understand what's happening in their organisation and how it's impacting them. If there's anything that we have learnt in the last two years, is that people are really re-evaluating their careers and their roles within the workplace and how it makes them feel. They're asking themselves those bigger questions of ‘Am I happy here?’, ‘Am I being treated with value and fairness and respect?’, ‘Am I being paid what I deserve?’ And if they're not, they're seeking out other companies that do offer that. Employees are looking for pay equity, social justice and pay transparency and they want to understand how organisations make their decisions about who gets paid what.

Do these topics make you feel nervous or anxious?

That's totally fine and not uncommon if they do. But you can’t avoid them. You can’t bury your head in the sand. You have to be able to get into a space where you're able to have these competent conversations. Because if you don't, your employees will find employers who are able to do this, who are able to provide them with evidence that they're being paid and treated fairly.

Need some expert support for your organisation? Book a free consultation call with me here.