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5 Labour market - gender segregation

5 Aug, 2019 11:06

Hi Community,

What labour market data would you use to determine if an occupation operates in sexist terms?

What I have in mind is the risk of an equal pay claim for applying a market supplement (i.e. a temporary pay increase due to recruitment/ retention difficulties caused by the same job being paid higher elsewhere) on job A within an organisation, where this organisation operates a job evaluation scheme and where the job A that attracts the market supplement, under the job evaluation scheme, is 'rated as equal' with job B within the organisation, but the salary fails to attract or retain talent for the job A.

For example, where cleaners (for the sake of argument, mostly females), under the job evaluation scheme, are paid the same as caretakers (mostly males), awarding a market supplement on, one could argue that to award a market supplement on caretakers would bring a risk of an equal pay claim as the market is tainted by sex discrimination due to the gender segregation.

So, in other words, how would you determine whether the market forces that are used as an argument to award the market supplement are not in fact due to gender segregation within the occupation in question?

Many thanks!

(And apologies for the binary representation of gender; this is sadly in line with the current focus in the UK legislation.)

Themistoklis

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Ray | 0 Posts

5 Aug, 2019 11:58

Hi Themistoklis and welcome to the forums
You can avoid this problem by not paying single rates for a job, and by having broader salary bands that will permit you to pay within a range (up or down from a midpoint). That way all of your jobs will be within the same band. Salaries are then reviewed in the light of performance, market positioning of the job, available budgets etc. and differentiation is thus defendable. This brings other problems related to the differences being felt fair......

Remember that in extreme cases niche jobs are paid more than the jobs of their bosses (traders, perfume "noses", footballers vs club managers....) so if market data is sound enough to prove a difference, then you will have defendable grounds for differentiation - I would find this more difficult to defend in the case of basic warehouse and cleaning jobs where the skillsets are far from rare.
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Themistoklis | 0 Posts

5 Aug, 2019 13:26

In reply to Ray:
Hi Ray,

And many thanks for this insightful comment--especially when I don't have much experience in reward management.

I should have said that the organisation has pay grades within the scale, so jobs rated as equal would be paid within a range of set salaries (typically starting at the bottom and going up with years of service and subject to performance).

Therefore, the equal pay question could potentially come up where the market supplement makes the job attracting the market supplement to be paid higher than the top of the specific pay grade.

To my knowledge, the market forces can be a justifiable reason to explain this differentiation as long as the difference in salary is explained 100% by the market forces and as long as the market does not operate in sexist terms.

But I may be overthinking it?
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Ray | 0 Posts

5 Aug, 2019 15:23

In reply to Themistoklis:
Many salary bands run from 80% of midpoint to 120% of midpoint. Paying at the top of the band is therefore 50% higher than at the bottom - that leaves a lot of scope...... Unless all female jobholders are at the bottom end and all males towards the top end there should be no major problems. Market forces are never a 100% explanation: performance, first few years of service in job, previous salary before promotion, salary review budget constraints all have an impact..
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Nina Waters | 0 Posts

5 Aug, 2019 16:02

I think this is a really broad problem, and it's good to think about the underlying bias built into market factors rather than just labelling it a recruitment/retention issue and perpetuating a structure that discriminates. So I'd say you're absolutely asking the right questions.

I think that if you have identified within your organisation that certain roles attract additional payments because of market forces and are also predominantly given to one gender, you need to see what else you can do about the issue. Perhaps that's targeted advertising, creating apprenticeships, reviewing barriers to applications etc. It might be that changes in the way you recruit/resource the roles could eliminate the need for the market supplement in time.

Changing the broader market forces at play here is probably beyond the power of any one organisation, but changing your organisation's response to them can be done.
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Ray | 0 Posts

5 Aug, 2019 16:10

In reply to Nina Waters:
Quite Right Nina. However, as a first step it would be useful to look at the origins of any differentials and the size of the job samples in question. Over the years I've seen raw figures that suggested discrimination existed, but which upon closer investigation were (at least partly) explained by other factors...
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