Pay equity is on many agendas. Whatever the causes of the gender gap in pay, a healthy gap remains. Even without new federal legislation, state legislatures and local governments are enacting their own laws, creating a patchwork of legal requirements depending on geography. California, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Philadelphia and New York City all have new groundbreaking pay equity laws. Pay equity is also a driving focus at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Politics may shift, but this issue won’t go away.
So what to do? Most pay today is actually based on compensation decisions dating back years. Most agree that people should get equal pay for equal work irrespective of gender or race, but more difficult is the painstaking work of finding pay disparities, determining their causes, determining where adjustments should be made and then making them. Nevertheless, this is exactly what new law and regulations require employers to do.
