Pay inequality has been a long-standing issue in the workforce. This is because some employees are still not getting paid equally due to their gender or due to executive roles.
But this issue should have been over decades ago. It does not make sense that it still goes on today since we have the technology to fix it. How? In this article, we’re about to find out.
Compensation Definition
Compensation for employees is usually one of a company’s most significant expenses. But this is normal and vital for any business.
Compensation is used to control, motivate and develop your employees. Aside from having a base pay, employees can also get other forms of compensation, such as:
- Commission
- Bonuses
- Stock options
- Benefits (Insurance, Child Care, Vehicle provision)
- Paid leaves (Sick leaves, Vacation leaves, etc.)
These compensations make or break your employee’s overall health and motivation in your company. These are also things potential recruits consider when entering companies.
But as we have already mentioned, a pay gap occurs in companies. But why?
Pay Inequality: Why Is It Still Here Today?
Pay inequality or pay gap is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as the difference in wages between two groups of people. There are two prevalent pay gaps that are occurring in our corporate world right now:
Gender Pay Gap
Sadly, a pay gap occurs between men and women. For years, women have suffered lower wages compared to their male counterparts. The gap is slowly closing, but it is still there. The gender pay gap is even worse for women of color.
This issue is rooted in deep misogyny that has been passed on from generation to generation. It is not a secret that men are seen as more capable than women many centuries ago. While it can be true for most physical labor, it isn’t the case for all jobs that don’t require much physical strength.
Executive-Worker Pay Gap
The executive-worker pay gap is the gap between a company executive’s wages and their rank-and-file workers. This is also a prevalent issue in employee compensation.
A study by Przychodzen and Gomez-Besares showed that an average CEO needs to work about 4.1 days for them to earn the annual salary of an average worker. This shows the great disparity between the two wages of different types of workers in a company.
Performance Management: What Is It?
There are many ways to combat the issues with pay gaps. One of the ideas is to rightfully base a person’s paycheck on how valuable they are in the company through managing their performance.
Performance management is a method where one systematically measures the performance of your employee. The process requires the organization to use its missions, objectives, and goals and aligns them with the appropriate manpower or resources to set priorities.
Present technology has provided us with the availability of performance management software. This is specific software that would carry out your performance management needs. It is designed to boost your business performance by incentivizing your employee productivity. It aligns and engages your employees and teams with your organizational goals.
Performance Management Software: How It Solves Pay Gaps
Performance management software is new, and some companies may not be familiar with what it is that they can do for their company. This software is usually handled by the HR department, and they train their employees on how to use the software. Here are some of the benefits that this type of software can give.
- It’s Better Than an Annual Review
Using performance management software allows your business to adjust its employee’s goals and expectations as conditions evolve. Instead of performing an annual review where you “look back” on the previous year and evaluate what was done right or wrong, you can do this in real-time.
You can have one rapid year-end review and multiple frequent check-ins throughout the year. This will be more efficient as you can correct and reassess what is working for you or not. You can also fix and improve problems immediately.
- It Lets You Communicate Effectively
Since everything will be on your performance management software, your expectations from your employees can be easily seen. You can inform your employees about their goals, responsibilities, and deliverables right from the software channel. You can easily communicate your feedback and improvement comments to your employees as well.
- Better Employee Tracking and Development
Because of the data available on the software, you can easily track and see your employee’s data and performance. You can measure which people perform well or if you have any underperformers and find out the reasons why they do so.
Seeing which areas they need to improve allows you to create development plans for your teams. You can then follow up with further training and mentoring as you see fit. Overall, performance management software allows your business to be on the same page.
- Motivate Your Employees
Having a system that tracks their progress will motivate your employees. They may be excited to take on new responsibilities or do even better on their assigned tasks. They may find work easier because they would have better clarity when being assigned their work. Knowing that a system is tracking them would also push for their growth and development.
How Does This Type of Project Management Help Fix the Pay Gap?
Using a performance management system as your type of project management can help fix your employee pay gap because it is subjective. As previously mentioned, it is a system that will match your employees to your organization’s needs. It will also rank their tasks according to priority.
Your system can see everything that your employee did right, and what they did wrong. And they can also evaluate them accordingly.
Traditional employee appraisal is usually subjective because you would have a supervisor do it. Employee appraisals also have some prejudice (such as gender bias) or personal bias involved. However, if you use a system to do this, this bias would be eliminated.
Conclusion
The problem of the pay gap is due to biases embedded in our society and traditions. It is important that you value your employees and you treat them with kindness and respect. This is key to keeping your employees satisfied and productive in your company. Using performance management software as your project management style will help you do just that.
We hope you learned a lot from this article, and we wish you good luck in eliminating the pay gap!
