TL;DR: Deb Muller and Cynthia Kerr discuss the growing importance of pay transparency and how it relates to pay discrimination and employee satisfaction. They highlight the challenges organizations face in balancing market pressures, legal requirements and employee expectations while fostering trust through open conversations.
Three Key Takeaways from the Video: Pay Discrimination
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Pay transparency laws and practices are increasing globally and driving more open conversations about compensation.
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Employees’ feelings about pay don’t always align with market rates, making clear communication and education essential.
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Transparency forces organizations to examine pay structures carefully which builds trust and can reduce claims of discrimination.
Video Transcript: Pay Discrimination
00:00:12.519
Deb Muller:
Hi everyone, welcome back to Two Minute Matters. I am Deb Muller, CEO and founder of HRQ, and glad you once again joined us. I’m really excited we have another guest star with us today — they keep coming. So if you want to be on Two Minute Matters, please let us know what your topic is. We’ll figure it out and just have some fun together. It’s really easy.
I want to welcome Cynthia Kerr. She is CEO and co-founder of Wellpay.
00:00:32.680
Deb Muller:
Before we get started, Cynthia, tell us a little bit about Wellpay.
00:00:39.399
Cynthia Kerr:
Thank you so much Deb, it’s a pleasure to be here. Wellpay works with organizations of all sizes to help establish and develop the rewards and compensation strategy of an organization. We work with CEOs, CHROs, heads of HR and really dive into the details and decision-making to have fast solutions that are real time.
00:01:08.479
Deb Muller:
That’s great and so needed. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the website. DM her, her LinkedIn profile is linked here. We’re so happy to have you for Two Minute Matters.
We talked about what we should talk about in two minutes and you floated a great topic — the correlation between pay discrimination and dissatisfaction at work. Not a big shocker that there is that correlation. But I’m not going to talk about it, I’m going to set the timer. Cynthia knows the rules: two minutes. One of these days we’re going to give an award to someone who hits two minutes because it’s harder than you think.
00:01:44.399
Deb Muller:
Let’s go do it.
00:01:46.520
Cynthia Kerr:
The reason this topic continues to come up is because we have a lot of market factor pressure right now. You have pay transparency laws being passed in the United States and other nations like Australia. You also have pay transparency in job postings. People are having more conversations around how they’re compensated as they should be.
What I found interesting is the conversation around pay to satisfaction and how happy you feel at work. We assign rates for ourselves but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to the labor market rates.
How do we continue to move through this new world order of more knowledge, realizing different roles and levels have different compensation markers and targets?
I’d also love to hear how you coach leaders when people come in with an inherent feeling they should have more or that something wrong has been done — a claim of discrimination — when the organization says here are the methods and metrics we use. We’re fair within our parameters. How have you dialogued about that?
00:03:13.879
Deb Muller:
Yeah, we’re just starting to have this conversation. We did a webinar on transparency in ER and this question about pay transparency came up. The good news, maybe the unintended consequence, is that when everyone was nervous about transparency, it actually gives you markers to have that conversation where before they didn’t exist.
Managers and people didn’t know where to go. You have to pay attention to your roles. It forces you to look at if we’re going to put this range out there, how does the rest of the organization fit in?
Two minutes is very fast — can you believe it? But I think it’s a great conversation for people to continue having and see how it’s changing. Are we having more conversations? From my perspective, it’s driving more transparency and that builds trust.
00:04:08.439
Cynthia Kerr:
I completely agree.
00:04:10.120
Deb Muller:
That’s it — two minutes is nothing but it starts the conversation. It flies by. Let us know what you think about pay transparency. Is it good? How are you handling these conversations? Do you have tips? Put them below. Let’s get the conversation started.
Thanks so much Cynthia for joining us. Anybody else who wants to come, we’ll see you on the next episode of Two Minute Matters. Thanks so much.
00:04:34.120
Cynthia Kerr:
It’s been a pleasure. Drop me a note on LinkedIn if you’d like to chat about this or anything else related to compensation. Thank you.
