Insights from Renegade Partner's CPO on how to eliminate pay inequity

A pay equity playbook with practical tools from Susan Alban on how you can start conversations that help your organization take steps towards pay equity

Susan Alban

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Why I care about pay equity

Common concerns

Glossary

Originally published May 2021

Introduction

Problem

While most leaders agree that

unequal pay is shameful and needs to end⁠

, few may feel equipped to take meaningful and efficient action to become “Fair Pay Leaders”.

Unfortunately, the pay gap remains wide, at ~82 cents on the dollar for women, relative to men (sidebar: the gap is much wider when you look at intersectionality of race and gender with Latina women, for example, earning only 53 cents relative to white men).

And many organizations have entrenched pay practices that unintentionally thwart progress, practices that are often rooted in “this is the way it’s always been” or “this is the standard pay-for-performance” playbook, but which are hugely detrimental to progress.

Opportunity

As such, it’s important not only to get fair pay conversations started, but to mobilize our organizations to take real steps towards positive change. As someone whose career is focused on making work better, I can attest to the fact that pay equity is one of the most gratifying things to work on because organizations that do end up putting in the work WILL experience demonstrable, quantifiable progress!

Purpose

This document has been designed as an interactive tool for pay equity advocates, and those who want to learn more about the topic, to work with and among their leadership teams to start conversations about pay equity, and to do the necessary and known body of work to pay all employees equitably.

This playbook presents three key pillars on which to build your fair pay initiatives and programs:

Reduce manager discretion in three critical points of an employee’s lifecycle (new hire offer, performance rating, discretionary comp adjustment)

Level new hires, and promote equitably with as much objectivity as possible

Regularly check pay equity systems through annual reviews to ensure they’re working

These pillars were first presented in a few articles I wrote and published in 2020 in Fast Company, LinkedIn, and Fortune, on which this playbook is based:

⁠

Pay Black employees based on their performance, not your bias - Fast Company "Working for pay equity is not a one-time effort, because inequity is constantly being reintroduced through bias." www.fastcompany.com⁠

⁠

Loading www.linkedin.com⁠

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`How to be a fair-pay CEO Gender- and race-based pay inequities are proving to be among the most troubling forms of workplace discrimination. Here's how to root them out. fortune.com`⁠
⁠

This guide is designed to help you and your organization:

Assess compensation principles and practices, and identify areas of improvement

Raise awareness of pay inequity and bias in your organization

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