Friday Coffee Talk from Planet Fair

Margret and Henrike talk about the binding pay-transparency measures in the new EU directive: 2021/0050(COD) Equal pay for equal work between men and women (pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms), and the MEPs back binding these measures. This directive is likely to have a big impact on organizations and companies.

Margret and Henrike discuss the exciting question of whether the opportunity to work in a home office, which is increasingly offered and used due to the pandemic, is actually a good or a bad thing - and have very different opinions and lots of food for thought.

Margret and Henrike chat about time and money over their coffees. And breaking time and money in work and compensation practices questions the underlying assumptions that have guided paid employment for so long.

After a break, Henrike von Platen and Dr. Margret Vilborg Bjarnadóttir are back - drinking their coffee and chatting about how to reach fair pay fast. Having discussed pay gaps and their underlying causes, the two will move further and tackle the big questions of work after the COVID-19 pandemic. From compensation strategies for remote work, measuring the value of work, developments in working time, to how companies can attract people back - Henrike and Margret absolutely agree - pay equity is an integral part of all these developments ahead. 

In episode 23, Margret explains the reasoning behind analyzing the value of work and presents a new tool developed by PayAnalytics that enables the assessment of the worth of jobs and the comparison of groups performing different jobs with similar value, thereby facilitating the identification of any job undervaluation.

Henrike is joined by a very special guest in a very special place: Vidir Ragnarsson from PayAnalytics - who is visiting Berlin. They discuss the very promising situation in Iceland. Pay gaps are going down and companies are increasingly willing to share their gaps. Vidir Ragnarsson's advice: Start with the data and measuring and go on from there. 

Margret is joined by has two guests: Rashmi Dixit and Kate Dixon, the partners and co-founders of Rakarising. Together they are on a mission to not only bring attention to oppressive pay practices, but to eradicate them. You can follow their work on rakarising.com.

Margret and Henrike are joined by Raafi-Karim Alidina, Consultant, Data & Product Lead at Included.

Margret and Henrike discuss this year's World at Work conference. One of the big topics at the conference is that many companies have great difficulties in finding new employees at all levels of qualification. In the U.S. in particular, companies are therefore looking at how to optimize reward packages and attract skilled workers. Because unlike in most European countries, US-American employees don't automatically get the benefit of health care or paid parental leave. But how could this reality be changed for the better?

Margret and Henrike discuss what the real state of equality is for French women. What laws are in place? How is pay equity measured? Is everything as progressive as it looks from the outside? Or do some things seem better than they really are?  

Margret is the host of this episode and is joined by Katinka Brose from the Fair Pay Innovation Lab. They discuss a fair pay lawsuit filed by a German media maker who went to court against her employer in 2017. But what impact will this case have on jurisprudence in Germany, where fair pay lawsuits can be counted on two hands so far? To what extent is the type of contract decisive here, and how can gender discrimination in pay be determined?

Margret and Henrike discuss the many positive benefits of fair pay, how for example happier employees make for happier customers, and other more long-term domino effects. They also talk about the head start Iceland already has because equal pay started to be implemented earlier. Henrike, as always, takes every opportunity to talk about her favorite topic, money. And in the eighth and a half minutes, Margret spots an eleventh domino effect...