Have you ever been moved to support a team of women that you find out has been dramatically underpaid for years of service and has stellar performance reviews?

Anonymous

July 7,2022 at 5:52PM UTC

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Have you ever been moved to support a team of women that you find out has been dramatically underpaid for years of service and has stellar performance reviews? I went to our compensation lead and am waiting to hear her advice on what can be done. I'm finding some women in leadership who don't push for their pay equity will never lift their teams for fair pay.

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AnonymousJuly 7,2022 at 6:04PM UTC
I have no advice for this, but commend you for looking into this! Best of luck with this!
AnonymousJuly 7,2022 at 6:31PM UTC
So great that someone finds noticed. They are fortunate to work with you!
Julie HumbirdJuly 7,2022 at 6:52PM UTC
Yes, in 2018 I took over a team where the men with less experience were paid $20K more than the women. One women had 18 years of service and we found she had been forced to take a pay cut to be on this team. I was furious and told our Manager I would personally help her find another job if they didn't correct her pay. They did and she still sends me 'thank you' cards.
AnonymousJuly 8,2022 at 12:09PM UTC
Great job, Julie! Couldn’t be more impressed by your advocacy and your success.
AnonymousJuly 7,2022 at 7:56PM UTC
I've certainly fought (successfully) for new hires who were underpaid but also internal (so typically subject to a 15% cap on salary increase). I haven't been as successful at fighting for in-position adjustments. I commend you for fighting for your team and wish you the best of luck.
AnonymousJuly 8,2022 at 11:55AM UTC
Carefully choose your internal comps. There was wording making a tangential reporting line sound more direct in all of our departmental job descriptions. I tried to change it to be more accurate and discovered it was there deliberately to keep our pay rates higher because they didn't want HR randomly picking departments with similar job titles as our comps. It made sense to me, but it's one of those obscure things that only experienced HR people are likely to know.
When internal comps don't help or aren't available (e.g., your team is so unique there isn't a good internal comparison group), identify some peer companies and reach out to them or utilize an industry discussion group to do an anonymous survey. Make sure you provide enough information points in your queries/survey to build a strong HR case. They aren't going to be convinced that a program with twice as many clients is a peer, or a global cohort pay scale applies to staff who only deal with local clients, for example.
AnonymousJuly 8,2022 at 12:14PM UTC
Thank you for your leadership! The team is fortunate that you are in their corner.
Can the importance of the business unit to the company and the threat of non-retention be translated into a pay increase? Does the company have a DEI initiative to which this matter can be tied?