The Plunkett Pay Equity Framework Step 3: Model Internal Equity

Everybody aims to achieve fairness and equality. This is the same for firms and workforce wanting equal treatment in the workplace. This is the reason despite the struggle for many years, the fight for pay equity persists.

Various groups, companies, people are in to join this fight. Firms embrace numerous ways to ensure they execute fair pay practices. Most of them start by restructuring their compensation packages and adopting modern frameworks that support pay equity.

The Plunkett Pay Equity Framework

Experts at Salary.com are also aware of the ongoing struggles when it comes to achieving pay equity. For this reason, they are constantly creating tools that will help firms get rid of unfair pay practices.

In addition, their CEO and Co-Founder, Kent Plunkett, created a framework to guide firms on their journey to realizing pay equity. This consists of best practices to help get the pay right. The result is The Plunkett Pay Equity Framework. It covers six steps that are as follows:

This is when firms receive the go signal from leaders. During this step, companies will also start securing support and funding.

At this stage, firms need to document every job role. At the same time, they need to group similar jobs and create a job structure.

This is where the review and analysis of the company’s pay system happens. This step is vital to find out about pay gaps within the company.

This stage allows firms to create competitive pricing. This is also the time when they can update their pay structures and apply pay changes.

At this point, firms must create an effective way to relay their plans. This is also the time when they start to train managers. In addition, it is during this stage that they need to explain their compensation plans to the workforce.

This process evolves and firms should do a regular review. This is critical to maintain pay equity within the company.

Step 3: Model Internal Equity

After steps one and two, firms are ready to begin with the next step. This step covers mostly the analysis process. During this step, firms need to find pay gaps within their structure. These gaps are usually obvious enough and are often unexplainable by job-related factors. Here are the critical processes that consists of step three of the framework.

Assess Pay Gaps

Usually, this type of review covers gender and race. But it is best to have a broader dimension for this assessment to be more precise. Firms can include other aspects that can influence pay.

Assessing distribution of demographics and pay levels across the company is also vital. This process will help firms get a better view of their existing pay practices. As a result, it can reveal if their practices align with their business goals and DEI efforts.

The aspects that they can include in the review are age, race, gender, union status, tenure, disability and more.

Perform Regression Analysis

Firms also need to perform regression analysis. This process spots the areas where pay gaps exist. This is a statistical method that assesses the company’s pay system. It looks into the interaction between various data elements.

It can find out if a given set of factors influences the company’s pay system. This involves running a series of tests and analysis. The aims to find out if there are pay gaps depending on gender, age, race, and other factors. The analysis intends to flag potential pay gaps within the system.

Conduct Cohort Analysis

There are cases where companies need to conduct deeper review. This is where cohort analysis comes in. Experts often use this method when there are red flags or pay gaps from the statistical models. In addition, this method can find out if there are acceptable factors that can explain the pay gaps.

Create Remediation Plan

After the reviews and analyses, remediation should take place next. This happens when there is confirmation that pay gaps exist and the company cannot find an explanation for it. At this point, firms bring in their legal counsel to create a remediation plan.

The plan should reflect the firm’s pay philosophy and their commitment to uphold pay equity. This is also the stage where they find out the cost of adjustments for the affected workers. Then comes the time-consuming process of knowing how much pay adjustment to give each worker. Afterward, firms need to work with their legal team and company leaders to set a timeline to apply the adjustments.

Pay equity is something that every worker and most companies want to have. For years, the process of achieving it seems impossible. But with modern compensation tools and technology, more companies are able to start their journey into achieving it.