Discrimination in Compensation
You may be discriminating with respect to compensation without even realizing it. Here’s what you should do.
As an employer, you have a responsibility to actively work towards eliminating discrimination in the workplace. Sometimes discrimination occurs in compensation because it is disguised behind a phalanx of job titles. You may need a job titling review to determine whether you have an
issue that requires attention.
Here’s a snapshot of what a job titling project would look like:
Divide your jobs into distinct job families such as Finance, Human Resources, IT, etc.
Order all the jobs within each job family from top to bottom by pay. You can use the actual pay for the jobs or sort by pay scale, if you have one.
Review the job summaries looking for the essence of the job.
Group together all the jobs that are, in essence, the same thing – even if they have a different title. For example, if you have several jobs that are essentially a finance manager, or administrative assistant, or IT technician, consider them the same job.
Compare the salaries or salary ranges for the jobs that are the same, noticing disparities in pay.
You have choices for how to handle step 6. The short version is that you would consolidate all the jobs into the same title and pay scale. If you want the long version, please reach out to me to discuss.
One of the benefits of undertaking a job titling project, in addition to removing a potential source of discrimination, is improving the way you compensate people by paying them correctly for the work they are doing. Once your job titles are cleaned up you will also find that benchmarking gets easier as well as handling annual salary increases.
