Marking International Equal Pay Day on 18th September gives organisations an opportunity to share their fair pay efforts and values to their employees and customers. Whether they work on a football pitch or behind a desk, employers must make pay equity a top priority, says UKG’s Group Vice President EMEA, Nicole Bello.
In this week’s guest column, Bello shares her thoughts on how businesses can deliver fair pay for all employees and how they can make pay equity a top priority on International Equal Pay Day today.
Despite progress over the years, pay equity continues to be an issue across UK businesses, with efforts to eliminate disparities in wages in some sectors still falling short of the mark – particularly in the sporting world. According to a recent government report, the mean gender pay gap still sits at 12.28%, highlighting the need for business leaders to review practices.
In sport, the gender pay gap is a particularly prevalent issue. In the Premier League, English football’s top division, it’s estimated that male players earn 100 times more than their female counterparts. According to UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions for all people, businesses should leverage available technology to support efforts to deliver equal pay.
PAY EQUITY REPORTING
For a variety of reasons, employers are sensitive to the subject of pay equity, but the bottom line is that wage disparity is a problem that has never gone away, and ignoring this issue only leads to further inequality. Extensive reporting is a good starting point for businesses striving to improve current practices. Organisations with more than 250 employees are already required by law to provide data on their company’s gender pay gap, and they should leverage the valuable insights that HR technology provides to access the necessary information.
From this critical data, companies then have the opportunity to rectify any adverse findings to remain compliant and ensure that all employees are paid fairly. A modern human capital management system can make this process easy by providing the labour data needed to identify pay disparities, and go a step further by suggesting a way to correct it. This technological ability coupled with generative AI can be an incredible resource for HR teams looking to bring equity to their workplace focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging – bias in job descriptions, fair promotions, and more!
At UKG, we aim to support pay equity by equipping our customers with technology that analyses workforce data and helps them cultivate an inclusive and unbiased working environment. In the UK market we’re working with Premier League football clubs who are benefiting from the visibility and transparency our solutions provide to review practices and deliver more thorough reports on how they structure pay.
CLOSING THE PAY GAP
In the US, we proudly announced the Close the Gap Initiative in 2022, which is a commitment to donate $0.18 — the gender wage gap — for every single employee paid each year via a UKG payroll solution toward programs and organisations fighting for equal pay. As part of the Close the Gap initiative, we sponsored the US National Women’s Soccer League and provided a record $1 million in prize money for the league’s Challenge Cup finalists – making the Challenge Cup the first-ever women’s professional soccer tournament to achieve pay equity with its U.S. peers in the men’s game.
Overall, it’s important that business leaders recognise the continued existence of pay disparity in almost every industry, and understand that just because employees aren’t working in an office, they don’t deserve to be earning less. Technology can identify and eradicate weaknesses in how pay is structured, providing valuable insights and analysis for business decision-makers seeking to enact change. Learn more about the Close the Gap Initiative here.
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicole Bello is Group Vice President (SMB and Channel, EMEA) at UKG. Bello leads regional teams with the philosophy that people are an organisation’s greatest differentiator and relays the value of the employee experience in fostering growth to prospects, customers and partners, in both established and emerging markets. She spends the majority of her time supporting business leaders in their organisations’ workforce management evolution and guiding them into the future of work. As a woman in leadership, Bello is passionate about talent development, within her own team as well as current and prospective customers she works with.
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