HR needs to embrace transparency if we are to make progress when it comes to pay and workplace equality, writes Duncan Brown
Martin Rowson’s brilliant cartoon in the Guardian, published a few days after the US election result, pictured a very drunk and disreputable 2016 driver smashed into a bloody lamppost, making the lame excuse that the year was almost done. For many of us, we might wish it had never started, or perhaps could start all over again.
And on this side of the Atlantic, a raft of data was published to coincide with Equal Pay Day on 10 November in the UK (the point in the year at which women effectively stop getting paid compared to men’s average annual earnings), which highlighted the continuing gender pay gap. It is at best closing very slowly – at 2.5p per annum, according to Deloitte – or, at worst, actually increasing again, according to the Fawcett Society’s latest research.
Having, in various guises, battled unsuccessfully to close the gender pay gap over the past 30 years, the often somewhat half-hearted and schizophrenic position of the HR profession – the majority of whom are female – has always part intrigued and part perplexed and frustrated me. They are caught, apparently, between their own hearts and desire to engage the talents of all employees, and that of trying hard to ‘partner’ with a business elite, some of whom almost certainly share Trumpish sentiments, even if they disguise them more subtly.
Why doesn’t HR get as angry as I do, or as outraged as the 16-year-old girls I speak to in school careers seminars, who are rightly enraged at the continuing female pay deficit when they outperform the boys? As Hillary Clinton said in her concession speech: “To all of the girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your dreams.”I tell the children I speak to that fighting this historic injustice is what HR and talent management is all about. But maybe I am out of date?
A raft of studies, including some shared a few weeks ago at another excellent ‘Fill the Gap’ research seminar I attended at Queen Mary University, clearly show the intractable nature of these pay gaps and that market and performance-based systems can unwittingly reinforce rather than reduce them. When interviewed for a piece of research by the GW4 consortium, one head of reward said: “Gender is an invisible thing for us… we go where the talent is and pay everyone their market worth.”
Female financial traders don’t earn half the bonus of their male counterparts because they perform half as well – they earn them because they are women.But tomorrow is another day. At least we now have a much better evidence base on the causes and potential solutions to the gender gap (IES’s own research summary of this for the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be published shortly), alongside a range of initiatives following the Davies Review, focused on gaining traction on achieving more diverse business leadership and women in senior roles.
My own research at Lewisham Council, which is unusually characterised by what is amusingly referred to as a ‘negative pay gap’ – ie women earn more than men – highlights the importance of sustained focus and example-setting by senior leaders, effective HR monitoring and support measures, and a promote-from-within talent strategy.
My crest-fallen eldest daughter Tabi, who followed a tearful start to her birthday in June with the result of the Brexit vote with more tears on the morning of the US election result, responded by pinning up this closing message from Hillary on her bedroom door: “I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but I know someday someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”
And had I been of like-mind, I should have pinned up this quote by Ann Francke:“(Line and HR) managers must embrace this new period of transparency and make sure that they’re part of the solutions that businesses need.”
Dr Duncan Brown is head of HR consultancy at the Institute for Employment Studies