Why Companies' Attempts to Close the Gender Pay Gap Often Fail

Nordic Women in Tech Awards has nominated one of our founders, Margrét Bjarnadóttir, in the category Entrepreneur of the year. We are super proud of Margrét and thankful for the nomination!

At the People Analytics & Future of Work conference in San Francisco last February Vidir Ragnarsson from Reykjavik Energy gave an insightful talk on how Reykjavik Energy tackled the task of measuring and closing their Gender Pay Gap within a few years.

In a recent blog post for PRCA PayAnalytics Co-founder and Chairman Margrét Bjarnadóttir explains in a nutshell how data and analytics are essential to the process of closing pay gaps – and keeping them closed. She explains, among other things, the two types of pay gaps most commonly mentioned in the press and the difference between the two. The blogpost also embeds a video where Margrét amongst others discusses the role of ethics and fairness when closing pay gaps. The discussion was a part of the PRCA Ethics month.

The World Economic Forum estimates that it will take over 200 years to close the gender pay gap. No one should have the patience to wait that long. How can we accelerate change? The answer may lay in data and models with a good dose of transparency.

The journey starts with gathering the data and understanding the pay structure. Then companies move on to identifying areas for improvement and eliminating unexplained demographic pay gaps through corrective action—in other words, ensuring equal pay for equal work.

The New Business Venture Fund has invested $525,000 in the software company PayAnalytics.

PayAnalytics has developed an equal pay cloud solution, and has grown rapidly in recent years. Its solution is already helping over 50 companies and organizations in Iceland close the gender pay gap, employing a total of 30,000 staff, or about 14% of the Icelandic labor market.

It is amazing to see one of our partners, the insurance company Sjóvá, perform so well. A company with 60% women on the board of directors and a female chair.

GEMMAQ rates companies in global markets based on how gender balanced their leadership is and is building a corporate gender equality and diversity rating and indexing system.

In a recent article, World-at-work set the spotlight on Reykjavík Energy and their pay equity work. Pay equity has been top-of-mind for Reykjavik Energy for quite some time, even before the topic was regularly making headlines.

The National University Hospital of Iceland has signed a contract to use PayAnalytics for their equal pay analyses.

42% of organizations are planning for pay equity adjustments in 2020 according to the recently published @WorldatWork 2019-2020 Salary Budget Survey. Is yours one of them? PayAnalytics can help. Our customers use PayAnalytics to assist them in every step on the way towards a transparent and fair pay structure. Our software solution recommends individual raises to close the gap, quickly detects outliers, gives an overview of the cost to help with the budgeting, and so much more.

Dr. Margret Bjarnadottir (@mvilborg2) from @payanalytics recently wrote a guest feature for @insideBigData about addressing demographic #PayGaps with Data-driven Solutions.

Demographic pay gaps, including the gender pay gap, are the result of more complex factors than just a desire to minimize payroll expenses. They stem from unconscious biases and processes that are better suited to one group compared to another. And, as multiple executives have found out, good intentions and “mindfulness” are not enough to eliminate the gaps.

Copenhagen Business School @CBScph recently published a "How I did it" story on @PayAnalytics. Read the full story on the CBS website.

"Our goal was to build an easy-to-use application that puts analytics in the hands of HR managers. We have created a web platform that enables users to walk through the process of statistically measuring their pay gaps."

Jon Henley, Guardian's Europe correspondent takes a look at how the Icelandic legislation has changed to combat the gender pay gap. One of the people cited in the article is the CEO of Reykjavik Energy. Reykjavik Energy has used PayAnalytics' software in their efforts to close the pay gap. We are proud to be part of their gender lens.