Dive Brief:

• Just half of workers think their pay is fair and nearly half of employers lack a mechanism to make sure it is, a survey reveals. Willis Towers Watson’s survey, 2016 Global Workforce Study, found this to be the case with 31,000 employees surveyed worldwide, including 3,105 U.S. workers.
• The survey also found that while 53% of the respondents thought their pay was fair compared with their counterparts outside the company, 24% disagreed. When comparing similar jobs in the same company, 55% of the respondents thought their pay was fair, while 22% did not.
• A companion study, the 2016 Global Talent Management and Rewards Survey, found that many companies don’t have procedures for ensuring pay equity. Of the 2,000 employers surveyed worldwide, including 441 from the U.S., barely half, 52%, have a formal procedure for gauging pay fairness.

Dive Insight:

With base pay being cited as the main reason most people either work for or leave a company, pay equity has become a key concern for employers. Companies that don’t pay their employees comparable wages will have difficulty attracting, hiring and retaining quality talent. Fair pay is tied to employee engagement, which, in turn, drives productivity and a company’s financial success.   

Educating employees about their pay and how it’s determined might be a necessary challenge for HR, as many departments are still figuring out the appropriate way to address pay at the recruitment level. Some states have made it illegal to ask about past pay during hiring, meaning employers have to adapt to new ways to calculate pay.