Dive Brief:
- Pinterest is joining a growing group of young tech startups that are closely reviewing employees’ salaries to make sure men and women are paid fairly, according to the Huffington Post.
- An outside firm is analyzing pay at the 5-year-old social network to make sure it’s not discriminating against any particular group.
- The reviews, which started about 18 months ago, take place “during the times of year when employees are up for bonuses and promotion,” spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said in an email.The company, which has more than 600 employees, wouldn’t say if anyone has gotten a raise as a result of its analysis or whether it had turned up any bias.
Dive Insight:
Pay audits are gathering steam in part because of the growing focus on the struggles of women in the tech industry -- there are fewer females in general, and a real dearth in high-profile positions according to the article. The idea is also catching on as so many of these startups start to, well, grow up, writes author Emily Peck.
“This is definitely new for startups,” said Joelle Emerson, the founder of Paradigm, a consulting firm that focuses on diversity. Emerson said that a few of her clients, including Pinterest, have started doing the pay comparisons.
Big companies have been doing these types of audits for years. The end game might not be fairness, per se, but to avoid getting sued for discrimination, Peck writes.
If you’re not doing these comparisons, “it’s like a ticking time bomb," said Ken Abosch, a compensation practice leader for Aon Hewitt, a company that does this kind of work for about 10 to 20% of the Fortune 1000 in any given year. (Some employers’ do their own analysis, typically in the HR department.). Even though the practice makes sense, "a surprisingly large number of organizations don’t do this," Abosch said.
