EPIC

A Look Back at Canada’s 2021 Pay Equity Journey

Submitted by ep_admin on Tue, 12/21/2021 - 05:30

A Look Back at Canada’s 2021 Pay Equity Journey

21 Dec 2021

In 2021, the Canadian Human Rights Commission continued to develop tools and guidance to help federally regulated employers take a proactive approach to correct gender wage gaps within their organization.

Women need support now more than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to amplify pre-existing gender inequities, especially for racialized women, Indigenous women, migrant women, women with low-income, single mothers, LGBTQ2SI+ women and women with disabilities or mental health issues.

With the Pay Equity Act now in force, employers have to begin work to close the gender wage gap. As we build back better, pay equity can help strengthen businesses by helping attract and retain talented and diverse employees. Closing the gender wage gap is essential to removing barriers, creating environments where employees are valued and engaged, and supporting economic and social recovery.
Engagement and Outreach

Engagement and outreach is a key component of the Commission’s day-to-day work. To help ensure a successful launch of the Pay Equity Act, the Commission provided technical briefings to workplace parties who fall under the Act. We also continued cultivating relationships with both Canadian and international stakeholders; raised awareness on pay equity issues and shared information about key requirements of the new law. This year’s engagement and outreach included:

• participating in dozens of events to foster engagement and build support;
• engaging with over 7,000 stakeholders, including employer and labour associations, non-governmental organizations, Indigenous women’s groups, and other key partners; and,
• responding to over 100 requests for information.

Resources and Tools
To help employers and employees get started, the Commission provided a variety of education materials and a series of tools and resources to help better understand pay equity and how to establish the foundation for a successful pay equity process. These resources and tools include:

• Interpretations, policies and guidelines
• Promising practices for workplaces
• A Pay Equity Compass – an assessment tool to help people know whether the Act applies to their workplace
• Infographics
• Templates
• An information request form

The Commission is building a pay equity toolkit for release in 2022. This toolkit is designed to support small to medium-sized federally regulated organizations with the development of a pay equity plan. It will include an Excel tool, a user manual and a job evaluation guide.

Processes and procedures
The Commission has developed program infrastructure, which includes:

• a compliance strategy;
• policies;
• program performance indicators; and,
• processes so that people can make requests.

Closing the gender wage gap and ensuring that women’s work is truly recognized and valued is one of the Commission’s top priorities. Looking ahead to 2022, we will continue to support federally regulated workplaces in learning about their rights and responsibilities as they work towards meeting their obligations under the Act.

We need your help to spread the word about Canada’s Federal Pay Equity Act! Please visit the Commission’s Website to learn more about pay equity and the resources available.

We welcome your comments and questions. You can reach us by:
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: Toll Free: 1-888-214-1090
• TTY: 1-800-465-7735
• Via our Request for Information Form

Innovating Pay Equity in 2021

Submitted by ep_admin on Tue, 12/21/2021 - 05:30

Innovating Pay Equity in 2021

21 Dec 2021

2021 has been an eventful year for Gapsquare in the best possible way! There have been many successes, some big, some small but all equally important. Let’s walk through some of them… we grew our team, positioned for global scale, and got very serious about innovating Equal Pay.

A huge focus for us this year has been growing our team to scale. Earlier this year, we recruited several new starters and they have all absolutely smashed it out the park and slotted perfectly into Gapsquare’s culture. Growing our team has allowed us to further our mission of creating diverse and inclusive workplaces and we are looking forward to welcoming more team members in the near future.

Secondly, we’ve been taking Gapsquare even more global this year via our partnership with SAP. Our software solution is now available on their store and we’ve been lucky enough to be invited as part of their SAP.IO Foundry Cohort, where we got to connect and learn from other amazing startups.

But you may have already heard the biggest news of all…we’re no longer a startup! In August, we were acquired by XpertHR and there’s loads of great stuff going on behind the scenes, ready for next year.

In terms of our goals, innovating Equal Pay has been a big priority for us in 2021, as we continue to make sure we scale with purpose. Equal Pay legislation exists in many countries around the world and has done for over 50 years now. This legislation usually requires employers to give employees equal treatment if they do “like work”, equivalent work and work of equal value – the kind of work that is deemed to be equal value in terms of skill or decision making.

Equal value, however, is harder to define in the context of an ever-evolving landscape of work. Jobs are constantly changing and COVID-19 has played a role in accelerating these changes. On one hand, we have automation and AI reshaping how we do our work and on the other hand, we have people working in hybrid settings, picking up skills or decision making tasks that might not be so visible to the employer when they work from home.

So what does this mean? One of the challenges for us going forward into 2022 is how can we can best utilise data and tech to innovate how we can achieve Equal Pay. Current solutions are based on cumbersome consultancy exercises. This just isn’t time-effective, as by the time it is completed, some of the jobs may already be different, require different tasks and different skills!

2021 has provided Gapsquare with a solid foundation for making 2022 great. We have our incredible team, we’ve scaled and exited our company and we are full of innovative ideas. All of these will help us as we move forward so that we can create a fairer world of working, one where pay meets value and diverse teams thrive. Here’s to 2022!

Switzerland as outgoing Chair of EPIC’s S STEERING COMMITTEE

Submitted by ep_admin on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 05:30

Switzerland as outgoing Chair of EPIC’s S STEERING COMMITTEE

16 Dec 2021

Switzerland, represented by Dr. Sylvie Durrer, Director of the Federal Office for Gender Equality, has chaired the Steering Committee of EPIC since the launch of the coalition in 2017. Sylvie Durrer is now passing on the torch to Rakesh Patry, Director General of International Affairs Canada.

As outgoing Chair, Sylvie Durrer states

“Over the last four years [as Chair of the Steering Committee of EPIC], I have had the honor to participate in an active manner in all kinds of discussions and events and to witness the growth of this important initiative. Since 2017, EPIC has welcomed 50 new members and launched the Equal Pay International Day celebrated on 18 September. EPIC has developed a certification system and “EPIC good practices” certificates have been delivered to various countries and organizations. The coalition has played and will continue to play a key role in shedding light on the issue of the gender pay gap and in advancing towards the achievement of full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men by 2030, as set out in target 8.5 of the SDGs. I believe this role has strengthened Switzerland’s conviction that sharing experiences between stakeholders from the public and private sector is key to empower women. Finally, I would like to recall that none of this would have been possible without the active involvement of all members and the hard work of the Secretariat of EPIC, whom I thank for their commitment and support. It is with pleasure and confidence that I pass on the baton to Rakesh Patry, whom I also thank already for the great ideas and projects he will bring to this coalition.”

Equal Pay in the Public Sector: Switzerland’s Good Practice Booklet

Submitted by ep_admin on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 05:30

Equal Pay in the Public Sector: Switzerland’s Good Practice Booklet

16 Dec 2021

In 2016, Swiss Federal Councillor Minister Alain Berset launched the Charter for Equal Pay in the Public Sector. Strengthening the political commitment of the cantons, communes and state-associated organizations is a necessary step towards the achievement of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.

This charter underlines the willingness of the signatories to implement equal pay within their own sphere of competence. It gives a strong signal to public and private employers, and aims to have as wide an impact as possible. In practice, the goal is to regularly monitor compliance by conducting equal pay analysis, both in the public administration and in companies mandated by the government.

In order to facilitate equal pay analysis, the Swiss Confederation has developed the webtool “Logib”. Originally intended for companies with 50 or more employees, the government launched in June 2021 a new module for SMEs. Only for Switzerland, this new module has increased the number of employers that can perform an equal pay analysis from 10,000 to approximately 200,000.

The possibility for smaller companies to conduct such analysis is a breakthrough for a variety of reasons. First, in Switzerland, like in many other countries, the great majority of companies, i.e. about 98%, are SMEs. Moreover, available statistics show that the unexplained part of the wage gap is particularly pronounced in these companies. In fact, in Switzerland women earn on average 19.0% less than their male colleagues (2018), with the unexplained part amounting to 45.4%. On average, this unexplained part rises to 60.9% in companies with less than 20 employees, compared with 27.4% in companies with 1000 employees or more (2019).

Although the charter is not legally binding, its implication for pay equality remains very concrete. Among the 17 cantons, 120 communes and 71 state-associated organizations that have signed the charter, many measures have been successfully implemented over the past years.

The canton of Jura, for example, is setting up a competence center to monitor equal pay relating to procurement and subsidies, and also requires companies with between 50 and 99 employees to carry out mandatory equal pay analysis. In the canton of Vaud, procurement and subsidy monitoring is the responsibility of a tripartite commission, the first of its kind in Switzerland.

The city of Lausanne has taken a different approach to promoting equal pay – it has developed a new salary system by reassessing all functions using an analytical job evaluation. The city of Winterthur, on the other hand, has adopted a diversity strategy that includes management training on the topic of equal pay. The commune of Riddes in Valais has revised its salary system following an analysis using Logib.

The new booklet ‘Towards equal pay. Implementing the Charter for equal pay: Examples from the cantons, communes and state-associated organisations’ provides an insight into the measures taken by 21 public entities and companies to implement the Charter. Highlighting good practices across Switzerland aims to encourage others to work towards the achievement of equal pay.

Link to the booklet (available in French, German and Italian)

EPIC Technical Meeting Autumn 2021 – Third Session On “COVID-19 Recovery For More Gender Equality At Work”

Submitted by ep_admin on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 05:30

EPIC Technical Meeting Autumn 2021 – Third Session On “COVID-19 Recovery For More Gender Equality At Work”

16 Dec 2021

On 18 November, the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) held the third of four virtual sessions of its members-only annual technical meeting. The meeting focused on countries’ recovery plans for more gender equality at work, as well as on the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector.

During the first part of the discussions, representatives from governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, and international organizations, highlighted the gendered impacts of the pandemic on the labour market and provided relevant policy examples supporting a gender inclusive recovery:

• Cross-country evidence shows that the pandemic has exacerbated gender inequalities, with gendered impacts on the labour market and the economy. Women have been suffering steeper increases in unemployment, in unpaid work and difficulties in work-life balance. While the European experience shows the relevance of job retention schemes to support employment, evidence from Asia highlights that employment gaps are even larger in regions where public support for jobs and businesses is more limited and the incidence of the informal economy is higher.
• Relevant policies adopted to address the consequences of the pandemic on labour and pay gaps include formalising informal work, promoting women’s access to private and public employment, tackling unemployment and preventing lay-offs, extending and providing paid parental care leave and childcare, as well as balancing parental leave between men and women. Investing in the care economy is also key to build resilient economies and support a sustainable job recovery.

The second panel discussion focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector, including SMEs:

• OECD evidence on the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on SMEs shows that women are more likely to report business closures and reductions in hours worked and in income compared to men. This relates to a sectoral segregation of men and women in SMEs, where women tend to be overrepresented in the hardest-hit sectors; women experiencing increased pressures of unpaid work during the pandemic; and their lower access to resources in times of need.

• If larger businesses could access business and employment support, SMEs and self-employed people struggled to qualify for these support measures. Policy lessons show that governments adjusted measures to changing contexts and that tailored measures tend to work better than general measures. Nonetheless, the measures have focused on immediate financial pressures but have done little to support the ecosystem of entrepreneurs. Policy actions are needed to create an ecosystem of support and to improve social security for the self-employed, including platform workers, alongside tailored measures to address labour shortages, gender mainstreaming in recovery schemes and gender impact assessments.

Can pay transparency policies help close the gender wage gap? The OECD thinks so.

Submitted by ep_admin on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 05:30

Can pay transparency policies help close the gender wage gap? The OECD thinks so.

16 Dec 2021

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently released a new report, Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap, which looks at the ways OECD countries are requiring companies to reveal the existence and size of pay inequity among employees. This is the first OECD-wide stocktaking of pay transparency measures, and the report finds a high level of commitment and policy momentum across countries trying to close the gender wage gap.

Eighteen out of the 38 OECD countries mandate systematic, regular gender wage gap reporting by private sector firms. This can entail calculating and reporting a range of different wage gap statistics, or the simple overall wage gap, to stakeholders such as workers, their representatives, a government agency, and/or the public.
Within this group, nine OECD countries have implemented comprehensive equal pay auditing processes. Equal pay audits require additional gender data analysis and typically propose follow-up strategies to address inequalities. Most of these policies were introduced in the past decade, and most of this movement took place in Europe, reflecting the 2014 European Commission Recommendation on strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women through transparency. Many of these pay reporting rules cover the public sector, as well.

Just under half of OECD countries use job classification systems in the public and/or private sector, which attempt to standardise pay and make it transparent across men and women within specific job categories. These classifications, often presented as salary scales, are more common in the public sector. Ten countries mandate that job classification systems, when they are used, be gender-neutral. This is an attempt to correct for gender biases in job valuations that can exacerbate pay disparities.

These pay transparency processes are based on important legal principles of equal pay for work of equal value, or equal pay for equal work. Twenty-seven OECD countries report to the OECD that they have clarified the concept of equal pay for equal work and/or work of equal value in national legislation. Most other OECD countries have clarified equal pay principles through the courts and case law.

Each of these policies, defined further in the report, have the potential to narrow the gender wage gap. But strengthening reforms, greater stakeholder engagement, and more and better evaluations of pay transparency measures are still needed.

To learn more, please check out the report here.

Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap

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Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap
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Reports

Launch of OECD report Pay Transparency Tools to Close the Gender Wage Gap

30 Nov 2021 - 30 Nov 2021
12:00 pm - (Europe/Paris)
Virtual
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