Data Driven Results To Close The Pay Gap

April 9, 2017 | Katriina Tahka

Today is Equal Pay Day. It falls on this day to mark the additional time from the end of the financial year it takes for a woman to earn the same as her male colleagues. That’s 65-days of full-time work and a pay gap of 23.1% for total pay of full-time employees and 17.7% for base pay of full-time employees.

For the average wages, a pay gap of 15.3% exists, which means that on average, men working full-time earned $1,638.30 and women earned $1,387.10, a difference of $251.20 per week. Between May 2016 and May 2017, women’s weekly earnings grew by 2.6%, while men’s weekly earnings grew by 1.5%.

Sure, I know what you’re going to say, “but wage growth and productivity is at an all-time low so, it’s hard”. I say, that’s a load of hogwash.

According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, their 2016 data reports that only 20% of all 4,697 reporting Australian organisations completed a remuneration gap analysis, 4.7% in the past two-years, and 1.3% in the past three-years.

So, while wages may be at an all-time low and the Australian economy is doing its best to stay in the game, organisations do have the ability to make positive strides in closing the gender pay gap through better reporting and data analysis.

Accessing the data and analysing it in a way that provides meaningful outputs doesn’t have to be complex. We just need to know what we’re looking for and how to find it.

For example, we need to analyse three sets of data to find an accurate pay gap review :

Organisational averages give you the total gender pay gap of all FTE staff

Job levels by grade give you the pay gap for staff on the same level; managers

Job levels by role equivalent gives you the most accurate assessment of any pay gaps as it allows you to compare like-for-like roles

When all three sets of data are run monthly, it allows the organisation to better control and manage the remuneration decisions they’re making and identify where anomalies exist. It means that they’ll be able to see remuneration decisions in recruitment and promotion activities across the business.

I know that creating these reports from scratch can be a real drag. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why only 20% of reporting organisations conducted a pay equity review last year?

So, I’m excited to announce that A-HA has been developing an online report that calculates the pay gap by location, business unit, team, job levels, age and tenure to take the hard work out of it for you. Our new cloud-based and enterprise version software now enables any organisation to immediately upload their data and receive instant reports detailing their composition, pay equity, and performance outcomes.

When you have data that is immediately available, not only is HR better positioned, but business leaders can access just-in-time reports allowing them to see their composition, pay and performance status any time they need it.

Our aim is the make it simpler for organisations and their leaders to be equipped with the right knowledge when making decisions that impact their people and positively close any pay gaps.

If you’d like to be kept informed of our new gender reporting dashboard tool, sign up here and we’ll stay in touch.