<aside> ✅ Immediate Action: Evaluate your benefits. Are your offerings catering to a limited group? Hire and a consultant or ask your HR team to conduct a pay equity study.

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Pay Parity

<aside> 💡 DISCLAIMER: Complex legal provisions govern compensation practices, employee leveling, and pay parity. Best to get advice from the experts, whom @Stephanie Vieira and @Jennifer Holmstrom are more than happy to refer.

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Pay inequity is often the result of systemic discrimination, and can be reduced by managing and minimizing bias. As a leader, you can improve the equity of ****compensation decisions by working with your HR team, legal counsel, or a compensation consultant to determine equitable compensation bands prior to making an offer to a candidate. By setting the pay bands ahead of time and sticking to them, employers can reduce the risk of recruiters or hiring managers introducing bias into compensation.

Inclusive Benefits & Perks

• Parental Leave - Parental leave policies include provisions for mother AND father (both biological and adoptive), with ample time for bonding as well as birth recovery.
• Floating Holidays - Not everyone celebrates Christmas, although it is typically one of the paid holidays that businesses provide their employees each year. Support employees of varying cultural and religious backgrounds by offering floating holidays to use at their discretion.
• Trans-Inclusive Healthcare Benefits - Avoid health plans with exclusions related to transgender care. Health insurance contracts should include coverage for transition related care.
• Fertility Benefits - In an effort to retain women (both mothers and potential mothers) many technology companies now include fertility treatment, egg freezing and storage and breast milk shipping as part of their benefits package.
• Childcare - Many companies will offer a tax-free stipend through their benefits provider to cover childcare.
• Elder Care - Many employees are responsible for the care of their aging parents or other relatives. Dependent care assistance programs can help in addition to flexible work hours or care subsidies.
• Tuition Reimbursement - Tuition reimbursement is a benefit in which the company pays or reimburses the cost of job-related or career-oriented education or coursework. An Accenture study found that the health insurance company Cigna saw a massive 129% return on investment for its tuition reimbursement program, and it can be a tax deductible benefit, which further enhances the the value for the employer.
• Professional Development - A Professional Development benefit can range in anything from offering skill-based training to employees, reimbursing employees for membership fees to professional organizations, formal mentoring programs or leadership coaching. This is a great way to invest in employees and ensure that they are staying up to date with industry trends and continuing to grow in their roles.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAPs) - Employee Assistance Programs are employer sponsored benefits that assist with a broad range of issues, including stress management, access to mental healthcare, wellness programs, grief counseling, child/elder care, pet sitting, financial planning and legal assistance. These programs help increase employee productivity and reduce absenteeism and the wide variety of assistance services they provide makes them extremely inclusive and adaptable to many types of employees.

Sources & Additional Resources

Pay Black employees based on their performance, not your bias