Late 2022, the Albanese government outlined a number of changes related to pay equality, including things like prohibiting pay secrecy clauses in contracts, and foreshadowing changes to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's remit to speed up equal pay.
Last week, those changes were passed in law.
A number of these items have been voluntary in the past, and will become mandatory in the future; some of these are new.
Workplace Gender Equality Agency
HR data analysts like myself are mainly concerned with the unit level profile (the big list of how much you're paying everyone in your organisation) and the management statistics (who you're hiring, firing and promoting).
Here's what I see as being a valuable exercise this year, so that you're read for the changes next year.
Make sure you know how to report on your pay data
This seems obvious, and yet many organisations get this wrong. The unit-level profile is not what people are contracted to be paid, it's what they're actually paid. You don't want your reporting to be the reason why next year, your organisation has an exaggerated pay gap.
What are regular hours? What forms part of their base salary, and what forms part of their total remuneration? Check the cross-tabs on this data by non-manager and manager class. Are there unusual variances? Are employees being paid (enough) super? These are all things that, if you're not already doing it now, you need to be doing by next year.
Check the rest of your demographic data
Because on top of your gender pay gap being published, you'll also need to supply all that voluntary information that you might've been ignoring over the last few years. If you have quality issues with that employee data, now's the time to start fixing it. Check it against this year's data, so that next year, you can just report.
Do you definitely have everyone's work locations? Ages? Home addresses? These are the kinds of things that you'll want to make sure you have, and that you've got up to date.
Be prepared to support your organisation
In addition, large organisations (≥500 employees) will need to have a policy or strategy for each of the six Gender Equality indicators.
Gender equality indicators
GEI 1 – gender composition of the workforce
GEI 2 – gender composition of governing bodies
GEI 3 – equal remuneration between women and men
GEI 4 – availability and utility of employment terms, conditions and practices relating to flexible working arrangements for employees and to working arrangements supporting employees with family or caring responsibilities
GEI 5 – consultation with employees on issues concerning gender equality in the workplace
GEI 6 – sex-based harassment and discrimination.
Some of indicators, you might not be involved in. However, a good policy or strategy will be based on workforce data, and you can expect your leadership teams to turn to you to support their decisions.
Do you know whether you'll be able to supply these? If you don't, do you know how to find out? Or who's responsible for it? Sure, you don't need to think about these things today. But it's better to be prepared, than to be blindsided in twelve short months' time.
All in all, these changes help bring problems out into the open. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, after all. I'm excited to see the changes and improvements that more open reporting brings to industries, and the challenges and opportunities it'll present me with.
