Noor Esposito· Total Rewards Manager, Steinbach Industrie
Asked in Pay Equity & Transparency ·
We are a German subsidiary of a larger group, about 650 people, in medical devices. Last week a senior product manager sent a formal request for the pay of colleagues doing comparable work, broken down by sex. We have handled a few under the existing national rules, but this one cites the new right and asks for average levels including bonus and benefits.
Her comparison group, as we would define it, is seven people: five men and two women including her. Giving averages for a group that size effectively tells her what one other woman earns.
I have spoken to our counsel and will follow their advice, but I would like to know how others are handling format, timing and small groups in practice.
6 helpful · 5 insightful · 6 agree · 4 replies · 216 views · 6 following
Accepted answer· by Ugo Eriksen
The small group problem usually comes from defining the group as her team rather than her category of equal-value work. We had a group of six. Applying the category from our job evaluation, which our reporting uses anyway, gave 41 people across product, programme and clinical roles, and the privacy issue went away. It is also the grouping you will report on, and our works council had already agreed it. If the category is still tiny after that, our counsel's guidance was to route the answer through the employee representatives rather than refuse it. Ask yours about that route. Whatever you send, prepare the manager first.
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Benefits Manager, Steinbach Industrie
We built a standard response letter with our counsel so that every request gets the same structure: the category the employee belongs to and why, the criteria used to set pay in it, her own total pay, and the averages by sex for the category. We aim for three weeks. The letter matters because the first few answers set the precedent for all the rest.
Director, Total Rewards, Halcyon Financial Group
Accepted answer
The small group problem usually comes from defining the group as her team rather than her category of equal-value work. We had a group of six. Applying the category from our job evaluation, which our reporting uses anyway, gave 41 people across product, programme and clinical roles, and the privacy issue went away.
It is also the grouping you will report on, and our works council had already agreed it. If the category is still tiny after that, our counsel's guidance was to route the answer through the employee representatives rather than refuse it. Ask yours about that route.
Whatever you send, prepare the manager first.
HR Business Partner, Meridian Health Systems
Do the analysis for her individually before you reply. In two of our five requests so far the employee was right, and it was much better to send the information together with a correction than to send the averages and wait for the claim. One adjustment was 8%.
Total Rewards Manager, Steinbach Industrie
