Pay Equity Analysis Part 2: Defining Job Categories

Pay equity analysis is one vital way of embedding equity with data. Not only is it the law in an increasing number of places, but it’s the right thing to do! There are numerous ways to conduct a pay equity analysis, some much better than others. In this series, we’re walking you through the intersectional gender and racial pay equity audit we recommend. In part 1, we talked about what materials you’ll need to get ready. Now we’re going to talk about what to do with that data once you have it.

Pay Equity Audits check to see if the way you are paying your employees is congruent with your ‘compensation philosophy’. Your compensation philosophy is a fancy term for how your company values employees. It includes how much you are willing to pay someone based on their job responsibilities, experience, job type, performance, etc. It’s unique to any given company and it likely changes and evolves frequently. What a pay equity audit does is look for places where factors outside your compensation philosophy have affected an employee’s pay; this is a red flag because it might be something that shouldn’t affect pay like race, gender, etc.