To mark International Women’s Day, Atalanta’s COO, Elizabeth Ames, has called for greater pay transparency to close the UK’s gender pay gap. Writing in City A.M., she urges companies to “value their staff fairly” and implement transparent pay bands to build workplace cultures founded on trust and respect.
Drawing on her own experience of unequal pay at an earlier stage in her career, Elizabeth argues that by keeping pay bands a secret and forcing staff to guess their worth at interview, companies are compounding pay inequality. Thanks to the UK’s culture of pay secrecy, and with industry averages often unavailable, it's no wonder that the gender pay gap remains as stubbornly fixed in women’s lives as ever. Disappointingly, new analysis from PwC has found that there is a 14.5% gender pay gap in the UK, larger than the OECD average of 13.5%.
All too often, International Women’s Day is the only annual focal point for discussions on the myriad challenges faced by women in society, including the gender pay gap. As Elizabeth points out, however, the solutions put forward regularly urge women to ‘lean in’ or to ask for more in pay negotiations - well-meaning suggestions, but ultimately ones that place the onus on women impacted by pay inequality to change their behaviour, rather than for the companies perpetuating the problem to change theirs.
One simple solution, Elizabeth argues, is for companies to commit to transparent pay bands. By ensuring pay transparency at every level, incoming recruits know their worth and can voice their expected salaries accordingly, while existing staff no longer have to rely on ‘whisper networks’ to measure their salaries against those of their peers.
Atalanta has full pay transparency, both in external job descriptions for recruitment and in internal career progression policies, which clearly set out both transparent pay bands and the skills and experience expected for staff to progress in their careers.
Elizabeth closes with a call for leaders on this International Women’s Day to avoid touting empty platitudes, but to commit to pay transparency within their organisations. After all, when it comes to the gender pay gap, you cannot fix what you do not know.
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