April is when companies with a headcount of more than 250 have to submit their gender pay gap, and according to the latest data, there is still plenty of work to be done. The Guardian reports that women are paid 90p for £1 earned by men.
The gender pay-gap law has existed since 2017. Most of us are now familiar with the key reasons a company may have a more significant pay gap than the industry average. They also differ from industry to industry; the ones I observe most are:
Presence of women in senior roles
Availability of flexible/part-time roles, especially at a senior level
Pay parity and equal pay
Un-addressed bias influencing recruitment, pay, promotion, recognition, L&D
Underpowered people policies, e.g. parental leave, menopause
Lack of investment in attracting women
Inclusive hiring practices won’t solve your gender pay gap. They will undoubtedly help reduce it and prevent you from widening it as your company expands.
What do these inclusive hiring practices look like? Here are my favourite for achieving measurable impact
Review your job advertisements and job descriptions. Is the language inclusive and gender-neutral? Is your job ad an infinite list of requirements, bonus skills, nice to haves? If so, you’ll receive fewer female applicants. Women are more selective than men when applying for jobs (based on LinkedIn data). They tend to screen themselves out and apply for 20% fewer jobs. Read this insightful LinkedIn report on how women find jobs.
If you haven’t already, implement formal Salary Bands for every role in your organisation. These are the secret weapon against the gender pay gap. Salary bands need to be regularly benchmarked internally and externally across various data sources to work effectively. Salary bands help mitigate bias from impacting salary negotiations and give your entire hiring team a framework to work within. They will also allow you to advertise the salary when hiring transparently.
Increase the availability of part-time opportunities, especially at the senior level and advertise the roles as part-time/flexible. Why can’t a CEO, MD, or CSO be four days a week from day one? As long as part-time work is something you have to earn through tenure, you will reduce your chances of hiring / retaining women.
Train your entire hiring community (recruiters, hiring managers, decision-makers, people/HR team) on inclusive and intentionally bias-free hiring fundamentals. Tactics such as balanced shortlists, anonymised CVs, and banning existing salary conversations will only go so far. Until your hiring community has developed a robust awareness of individual and systemic biases and how to mitigate said biases during recruitment, you may continue to discriminate against women inadvertently. This could lead to fewer female hires or lower salaries negotiated for female candidates.
