Innovating Pay Equity in 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!