The role of Job Architecture and the Gender and Diverse Pay Gap

In March 2023, we asked Talent Leaders from 230 leading companies around Australia & New Zealand how they felt about the fairness of the pay structure in their organisation.

When asked to rate out of 10 if their ‘Organisation has “robust remuneration practices that ensure all people are paid fairly and equitably”, 63% of respondents rated themselves a 7/10 or higher.

However, when asked in a follow up question about their gender pay gap, only 38% said that they and their Manager knew their company’s Gender Pay Gap without looking it up.

The data reveals a significant discrepancy between respondents’ perceptions of their organisation’s commitment to fair and equitable pay practices and their actual knowledge of the gender pay gap within their company by those that are responsible for making salary offers.

In our follow up interviews with Talent Leaders who took part in the survey, the role of Job Architecture in ensuring fair pay practices became apparent.

“Even as Global Head of TA, I don’t have access to our Gender Pay Gap so I’m all for the new transparency legislation as Rem & Benefits who have the data will have to show it.”

“Salary demand from the external market is 30-50% higher than internal salaries. If we closed the pay gap, we’d need to adjust all of our internal staff which at that rate is unaffordable. Our staff are saying that it’s actually better for them to leave and then come back so they can negotiate a better salary.”

“Our process is to ask all candidates what their current salary is as well as what their expectations are to avoid offering candidates large increases to move across. I have tried hard to influence but have been unable to shift old mindsets.”

What is Job Architecture?

Job Architecture serves as the backbone for remuneration and fair pay practices. It establishes consistent job evaluation processes, supports pay equity, promotes internal equity and transparency, and ensures market competitiveness.

By leveraging job architecture effectively, organisations can foster fair and equitable compensation systems that align with the value and responsibilities of each job role.

When interviewing Talent Leaders for our 2023 State of Talent Acquisition Report, here’s what one talent leader told us about job architecture:

“The job architecture work that the HR team did has been invaluable, it benefits us in multiple ways including avoiding pay gaps, overall hiring equity, learning and development pathways and internal promotions. We have three job families, each with several streams, and every role is structured around four core competencies. It becomes much simpler to map a candidate and their capabilities to a role, and from that know what is a fair and equitable offer regardless of their gender or even years of experience. Everything starts with the job architecture model.”

This article is an extract from the 2023 State of Talent Acquisition Report

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