Maya Chen· Compensation Manager, Halcyon Financial Group
Posted in Compensation ·
Nobody had requested it. I ran average compa-ratio by gender within each grade at our Canadian engineering and construction firm, about 2,900 employees, simply to see.
Overall the gap was under one point. Inside grades it was a different picture: women in the three senior professional grades averaged 94% against 99% for men. Tracing it back, nearly all of it came from starting salaries. Women were hired on average 5 points lower in the range and annual percentage increases had kept that gap intact for years.
We have since set a rule that offers are made on range position for experience, not on previous salary. My advice is to look at hiring before you look at the annual review.
5 helpful · 1 insightful · 3 replies · 168 views · 9 following
Yusuf QuinteroCRP, GRS
Total Rewards Manager, Silverline Media
We found the same pattern, and a second one beside it: promotion increases. Men promoted internally received on average 1.4 points more than women promoted into the same grade, because the increase was a percentage of a starting salary that was already higher. Moving to a target position on promotion closed it.
Director of Benefits, Orchard & Vine
Compa-ratio by grade is a good first pass, but it can hide differences in job mix within the grade. When we controlled for job family, about half of our apparent gap went away and a new one appeared in a family we had not been watching. Worth the extra step.
Bianca WalshCEP
Job Architecture Lead, Pinehurst Foods
Did you correct the existing gaps or only fix the hiring rule? We did the forward fix first and it was three years before the numbers moved. In hindsight a one-off adjustment of about 0.3% of payroll would have been cheaper than waiting.
