Survey: HR pros struggle to get leaders' attention on pay equity

Dive Brief:

Thirty-seven percent of HR professionals in a recent Salary.com survey said their organization struggled to address pay equity. Leaders may be making the task harder, the Dec. 5 findings suggested.
Garnering leadership support for pay equity among company leadership was the most frequently cited challenge, the survey revealed.
Hurdles to pay equity may be growing in significance, as 64% of respondents said they observed increased pressure to address pay equity in the latter half of 2021.

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Katie Clarey/HR Dive, data from Salary.com

Dive Insight:

The Salary.com survey flagged a dissonance in corporate America: despite building pressure for pay equity, leaders aren't offering their support. The discord isn't lost on employees. According to an earlier Survey.com report, workers doubt employers' commitments to closing pay gaps.

Unsurprisingly, this distrust could be diminished by pay equity action, a Society for Human Resource Management report revealed. When compared to HR professionals whose organizations didn't assess pay discrepancies, HR pros working at organizations that conducted reviews were about twice as likely to report confidence that pay records could account for a pay difference.

Advocates of pay equity are quick to recommend compensation audits as a best practice. There is also a growing number of advocates who lobby for pay transparency.

Many companies lack a pay philosophy, Garry Starker, Salary.com senior compensation consultant, wrote in an HR Dive opinion earlier this year. A pay philosophy is an essential step in establishing pay equity, and a good philosophy hinges on transparency, he argued.

"When companies take the time to ask whether greater pay transparency can support and reinforce organization culture and values, the answer, inevitably, is 'yes,'" Starker wrote. "Pay transparency is a movement: Employees, and society at large, are demanding it."

But companies are slow to adopt transparency, according to Salary.com's most recent survey. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said their companies lacked a compensation philosophy supportive of pay transparency.