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Conducting Pay Audits Consider the example of one employer that voluntarily decided to audit its pay practices: In 2015, Salesforce performed a comprehensive pay audit and analysis of 17,000 employees that led to salary adjustments for 6 percent of employees and a 33 percent increase in the number of women who were promoted that year (Zarya, 2016). Salesforce's actions garnered attention across the country. Understanding the critical role employers play in ensuring equal pay for the nation's workforce, the Obama administration announced a White House Equal Pay Pledge for private sector companies committed to equal pay for their employees. These companies committed to conducting annual gender pay analyses across occupations; reviewing hiring and promotion processes and procedures to reduce unconscious bias and structural barriers; and embedding equal pay efforts into broader company initiatives (The White House, 2016). After the end of the administration, Simmons College now hosts the Employers for Pay Equity Consortium. As of September 2018, more than 35 companies had joined the consortium, including Delta Airlines, Deloitte, Facebook, Gap Inc., General Motors, Johnson Er Johnson, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Staples. Employers can use audits to monitor and address gender pay differences to great effect. For example, Minnesota requires public -sector employers to conduct a pay -equity study every few years and eliminate pay disparities between female -dominated and male -dominated jobs requiring comparable levels of expertise (Minnesota Management and Budget). Employers use a job -evaluation tool to compare jobs on such dimensions as the complexity of issues encountered; the depth and breadth of knowledge needed; the nature of interpersonal contacts required; and the physical working conditions. This allows employers to identify different jobs—for example, delivery van drivers and clerk typists—that require similar levels of knowledge and responsibility. Employers then compare wages of predominantly female jobs with those of predominantly male jobs of comparable skill levels. If they find that women are consistently paid less than men for jobs requiring similar levels of knowledge and responsibility, the employer makes the necessary salary increases. The state's efforts have been hugely successful: Since the 1970s, Minnesota has virtually eliminated the pay gap in public -sector jobs of comparable value (Legislative Office on the Economic Status of Women, 2016). Companies must be sure that they continue to analyze pay decisions— when salaries are set, when job functions change, when bonuses are awarded or raises given—to ensure that salaries remain equitable. Prohibiting Retaliation for Wage Disclosure One significant reason the gender pay gap is closing so slowly is that pay disparities are notoriously difficult to detect. Generally, salaries are not public. Because many employees have no way of knowing when they are shortchanged, it's hard for them to contest pay discrimination on their own. Furthermore, employees may face retaliation for inquiring about wages because some workplaces have pay secrecy policies that punish or even fire employees for disclosing or inquiring about their own wages or the wages of a co-worker. Such punitive pay -secrecy policies make it difficult for workers to remedy wage disparities because they cannot find out if they're being paid less. In 2011, a national survey by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) found that about half'of employees said they worked in a setting where managers either formally prohibited or discouraged discussions of wages and salaries (Institute for Women's Policy Research, 2011). According to IWPR, pay secrecy was particularly common in the private sector, where 61 percent of employees are either discouraged or prohibited from discussing wage and salary information. CI THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT THE GENDER PAY GAP 1 Fall 2018 Edition AAUW • www.aauw.org Pt =lb