Right here on the Unbounce weblog we’re normally speaking about all issues conversion intelligence and optimization. And whereas we’ll return to our repeatedly scheduled programming quickly, immediately we have now a name to motion of a special sort. It’s one which’s crucial to our people-focused firm and a difficulty that firms can now not ignore—the gender pay hole.
Research from Stats Canada reveals {that a} lady solely earns $0.92 for each $1 made by a person even after adjusting for variations in industries, occupations, and price of part-time work. And this hole is way worse for girls dealing with a number of types of discrimination, corresponding to racialized ladies, trans ladies, and girls dwelling with disabilities.
In the meantime, as economies re-open, we’re now seeing a widening of gender inequities caused by COVID-19. Ladies sadly proceed to be extra weak to the financial results of the pandemic attributable to their elevated probability of working in service industries and being the first caregiver of younger youngsters. If we’re not intentional about our actions, we may see many years of progress for gender equality within the workforce worn out in a single yr.
At Unbounce, we’ve been working exhausting to foster actual range and inclusion within the office, each inside our personal partitions and outdoors of them. Now, we wish to assist and encourage our friends to deal with pay parity at their very own firms. We consider that regardless that dialog and debate are wholesome contributors to progressing necessary points, actual change can solely occur when firms decide to taking significant actions on huge points.
And so—past having addressed our personal pay hole at Unbounce—immediately we’re launching Pay Up for Progress, a approach of urging firms to pledge to make equal pay a enterprise precedence. This pledge is a dedication taken by your CEO or Head of HR/Folks and Tradition (P&C) to finish a gender wage hole evaluation and start taking sensible steps in direction of pay parity.
A number of Canadian tech firms together with Traction on Demand, Allocadia, Kiite, Thinkific, Clio, and Klipfolio have already dedicated to taking the pledge and making pay parity a precedence inside their organizations.
Why Make Pay Parity a Enterprise Precedence?
Lots of us as a touchdown web page builder, however you won’t be accustomed to the group behind our software program. From day one, we’ve been consciously constructing a people-first group with totally different backgrounds, experiences, and views.
Embracing range isn’t solely about doing what’s proper. We additionally know that firms with numerous expertise and honest, equitable practices for all staff are more healthy companies total.
For example, when organizations make equal pay a priority, they’re 19% extra prone to exceed industry-average ranges of productiveness and 54% extra prone to beat industry-average turnover benchmarks. In different phrases, companies that worth equality find yourself with much less turnover and better productiveness.
There’s extra. We hope 2020 has awoken us all to the huge gender and racial inequities that also exist on the earth immediately. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that we have now an opportunity to re-examine the methods we function as companies—and one of many clearest alternatives for us to make a constructive impression is by standing for equal pay.
We definitely aren’t the one enterprise paying attention to the significance of pay parity both. As a part of Salesforce’s dedication to equality for his or her staff, the corporate carried out two pay audits, pledged to guage compensation on an ongoing foundation, and not too long ago adjusted the salaries for 30,000 staff to deal with statistical variations in pay. Other prominent companies like Starbucks, Adobe, RealSelf, Glassdoor, Boston Scientific, Citi, Microsoft, Hole, and Zillow have all made efforts to shut their pay hole and monitor pay parity on an ongoing foundation.
Not solely are these firms seeing higher enterprise outcomes, however we admire that they’re paving the way in which for smaller firms to start out taking motion too. Which leads us to our story.
How Unbounce Prioritized Gender Pay Parity
Three years in the past, after analyzing compensation all through our firm, we found (to our shock and disappointment) that we had a gender wage hole at Unbounce. From the very starting, our founders have acknowledged the significance of treating all staff equally and pretty—so once we realized about our pay hole, there was no query that we’d take motion to shut it.
Wanting again, our journey was stuffed with ups and downs. However because of the exhausting work of our P&C group, knowledge group, and founders, I’m happy to say we took the mandatory steps to realize gender pay parity.
At the moment, this implies each self-identifying women and men at Unbounce with the identical managerial standing, improvement degree, and geographic location are paid equally. And whereas we’re definitely happy with the strides we’ve made to this point, we nonetheless have a protracted highway forward of us. This work is rarely completed.
We notice many firms, particularly SMBs, could also be under-resourced to do a compensation evaluation and deal with prioritizing equal pay on their very own. That’s why we’re sharing among the instruments, assets, and a neighborhood of assist to assist firms start taking their very own steps to succeed in equal pay.
In the event you take the pledge, there are just a few methods we’d wish to assist you. You’ll get:
- Entry to the “Pay Up for Progress Toolkit”—a step-by-step information we created based mostly on our expertise to realize pay parity.
- An invite to 2 stay workshops (by way of distant webinar) with advocates and specialists to offer steerage and reply your questions.
- Help from a neighborhood of fellow pledged firms that may assist coach and encourage each other.
Equal Pay Must Be Prioritized
Right here’s my ask of you, your CEO, your HR or P&C leaders, and anybody else who’s a part of this journey: commit to creating progress immediately. Don’t aspire to realize perfection at a distant level sooner or later. Within the midst of the world’s crises and alongside a renewed urgency for motion in direction of dismantling all types of discrimination, prioritizing pay parity is now not a ‘good to have’—it’s a necessity to your group, enterprise, and neighborhood. I hope this pledge (and the neighborhood of pledgers) would be the galvanizing first step for a lot of.
You’ve seen the analysis, you’ve learn the stories, you’ve heard the numerous tales. You don’t want me to persuade you that one thing must be achieved. The time is now for us all to make our workplaces extra honest and equitable for everybody. And if we do that work collectively, we will shut the pay hole for good.
