According to the U.S. Census, the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time job is $40,742, but the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time job is $51,212. This means that if an employer bases compensation on salary history, a woman may find herself chronically underpaid.
Laws in eight jurisdictions have been passed that prohibit employers from asking for salary history as part of the employee screening process. Many more states and cities are in the process of developing similar legislation. This is a step towards narrowing the earning gap between women and men.
HireRight philosophically believes that eliminating salary history is the right thing to do, regardless of legislation.
Today, we talked about the fact that sometimes a potential employee wants to disclose their salary history. It is important that organizations have a procedure for facilitating this conversation, and doubly important for outsourcers to have a strategy for dealing with this conversation so they don’t inadvertently make the company responsible for violating the law (and therefore being subject to fines).
Dawn Hirsch and Alonzo Martinez helped our audience understand that pay equity considerations are just one step towards making work more equitable for everyone (and for making the interview process better by focusing on what matters: the candidate’s qualifications for the job itself).
Here are a few key points Dawn and Alonzo shared:
- Elimination of salary history questions is a best practice for an HR department
- Pay equality legislation is gaining momentum nationwide
- Compliance is the cornerstone of a good candidate experience
- The Pay Equity Act will be more challenging for search firms than for companies themselves
Did you miss the show? You can listen to the #WorkTrends podcast on our BlogTalk Radio channel here: http://bit.ly/2hC6pEk
You can also check out the highlights of the conversation from our Storify here:
Didn’t make it to this week’s #WorkTrends show? Don’t worry, you can tune in and participate in the podcast and chat with us every Wednesday from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT). (Note: We’ll be taking November 22 off due to the Thanksgiving holiday.)
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Photo Credit: Rosmarie Voegtli Flickr via Compfight cc
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