Uncovering the Gender Wage Gap - Workology

Uncovering the Gender Wage Gap - Workology Why Wage Disparity Exists First let me start off by saying I believe the wage gap is real. It exists. The wage gap is an issue according to what I know about being a woman and according to research, which tells us that women are making on average $.78 for every dollar a man makes. Having been involved in my share of salary negotiations and compensation investigations, I can say that none of my investigations were concluded with evidence that a hiring manager was intentionally providing male candidates with more compensation than female ones. However, I have personally encountered wage disparity early on in my own career, and I believe it was because I was a woman. Why Wage Disparity Exists Having worked in the human resources industry for over 15 years now, I have seen my share of wage disparity. If wage disparity exists at an organization or for an individual it is because one of the following reasons below. Keep in mind that Im making the assumption that hiring managers and other company representatives are emotionally intelligent and morally upstanding human beings. The company has no salary or compensation plan guidelines The compensation plan was not aligned with current market conditions The hiring manager was uneducated, unaware or ignored the current economic market or compensation plan The candidate did or did not negotiate Unconscious bia by the hiring manager exists I believe that most people want to do good and that includes to compensating their employees justly, honestly and fairly. Compensation on both sides (employer and employee) is complex. Thats because we never talk about how much we make and are encouraged not to discuss our salaries at work. Money conversations make us uncomfortable whether its personally, professionally and on behalf of our companies. Last year, we heard about Erica Baker, who is an ex-Google employee. She developed and distributed a spreadsheet on Google Docs that was used to share employee salaries within Google. Not surprisingly, it uncovered a lot of wage disparity, however, its not clear if it was on any disciminationatory factors. The disparity is likely due to one of the five above reasons, but first we need to take a step back and understand more about compensation bands and salaries. What are Salary Pay Bands? Most companies use salary pay bands and have compensation programs that are standardized. Each position or job within your company is assigned to a salary pay band and has an associated salary range. Pay bands include more than one position. A Senior Customer Service Manager might be in the same pay band as a Junior Accountant. There is typically a salary minimum, a salary mid and salary maximum where managers are allowed to use their own best judgement so long as their new hire or current employees stays within the band. Often times companies provide charts for hiring managers to be consistent in their new employees starting salary.  For example, at a past employer, my hiring managers knew they could provide candidates an offer of an additional $1.50 an hour if they had 5 years of experience. The salary band is designed to maintain salary integrity and consistency among new hires.  Unfortunately, compensation isnt always so simple. Markets often change more quickly than do salary bands. Markets like Silicon Valleys move so quickly companies  are willing to increase compensation regularly because the market changes so drastically. I believe that company compensation bands, markets and levels should be evaluated every 12-36 months. A good compensation system has checks and balances. Candidates hired outside of a pay band need approval from HR or senior leadership. Managers who want to increase the compensation of employees outside of pay bands, also need the approval of senior leadership. Why Workplace Pay Disparity Exists Unfortunately, its when companies dont have a structured compensation program that problems begin to arise. Pay disparity exists in small to medium sized business including high tech and high growth startups like Google where there is no compensation process, standard or program. Add in the crazy job and housing market within the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley area and you have the perfect storm for pay disparity. The other reason pay disparity exists outside of economics and a lack of a compensation plan is unconscious bias. This means that managers or leaders dont realize their compensation decisions are happening a certain way. Companies need to be conducting an annual compensation audit that looks at compensation across the board in aggregate and across protected classes. But What About Women and the Wage Gap The wage gap happens when these checks and balances dont work; when one of the five problems I mentioned at the beginning of the article happens consistently and over time. Keep in mind that when women first entered the workforce in large numbers, there was no compensation plan or salary bands to establish these checks and balances. Women were happy to work and no employment laws existed to ensure that salaries were consistent between men and women. The best way employers can impact the wage gap is by doing the following: Conduct a comprehensive compensation analysis. The best way employers can impact the wage gap is by conducting a compensation analysis and taking a look not just at women across salary levels but throughout their career, while also taking into consideration entrances and exits not just at their organization but throughout employees careers. Look at all protected classes and not just women. Provide resources for your female workforce.  When women exit the workforce due to childbirth and child raising responsibilities, we have often have one central focus and that is our children. Even if we dont leave the workforce, our focus shifts to the child we are raising. We make sacrifices. This leaves little time to focus on improving our professional skills and enhancing our existing qualifications. These resources can come in the form of childcare, flexible scheduling, and training stipends for new mothers. The best way individuals can impact the wage gap is by doing the following: Educate your employer.  Talk to them about the wage gap. Find yourself a sponsor within the organization to help you navigate the issue and create a plan. This will ensure you have support among leadership. Address it in meetings. Talk to your senior leadership and let them know what you as a woman or as an advocate think should be done. Aspire to senior leadership roles.  Outside of having male advocates within senior leadership, women need to aspire to senior level positions within organizations to help drive change and change assumptions about parenting and being a women in leadership. You can be a parent and be a member of the executive team. You can be a woman who isnt a parent and be a member of the executive team. Be a mentor to other women.  I never truly understood the struggles that women faced  as a new parent in the workplace until I had a female mentor who talked openly with me. She provided me with insights, support and resources. I mentioned that I encountered pay disparity as a woman early on in my career. My boss met with me to laterally promote me to the position of trainer because I was a woman without children and could travel. I later learned this was one of the reasons I was hired, in contrast to my counterpart who was a woman with children. I politely turned down the trainer role as it wasnt part of my career plan. What he didnt know was that my husband and I were trying to get pregnant, and I didnt feel the need to share. It doesnt matter what the reason what truly. I didnt want to be a trainer, and shouldnt be moved to the position because I am an adult without children. Maybe my counterpart wanted to role more than me. Instead of addressing it with my employer, I began the search for a new job opportunity that better suited my career aspirations and needs. Through conservation, education and transparency we can change the wage gap and ensure that women and other protected classes are compensated fairly.

Welcome to the Real World Finding Your Place, Perfecting Your Work, and Turning Your Job Into Your Dream Career

Welcome to the Real World Finding Your Place, Perfecting Your Work, and Turning Your Job Into Your Dream Career Lauren Bergers new book, Welcome To The Real World: Finding Your Place, Perfecting Your Work, and Turning Your Job Into Your Dream Career is completely great. For your young, confused colleague who just doesnt appear to get it. Accomplish you work with somebody simply beginning their profession who cannot make sense of why just gathering least desires doesnt get remunerated? They need this book. Do you see youthful associates depending on propensities and systems that functioned admirably in school, yet dont perceive how inadequate those equivalent techniques are in the work environment? Or on the other hand perhaps they practice poor email decorum, never take notes at gatherings (or even claim to), and are essentially futile when they need to make sense of something all alone? Get them a duplicate. Possibly two duplicates. Shrewdness From The Intern Queen A vocation master and organizer of InternQueen, Berger opens with a drawing in, self-censuring tale about being a significant botch in her first genuine activity: individual right hand for a headhunter in Los Angeles. Furthermore, despite the fact that I was snared on her engaging composing style and her sort however firm trustworthiness, I still couldnt help yet think, Gosh, this guidance is so fundamental. Which is actually the point. This book was not composed to profit me, an accomplished 44-year old with an assortment of occupations and ventures behind me, brimming with certainty, and to some degree shrewd about the working environment its traps. In Welcome to the Real World, Berger has made a manual that is fundamental for novices in the working environment. She covers subjects like the colossal worth your network can give on the off chance that you put resources into it, sorting out your working environment making frameworks to help you. She tends to proficient email rehearses email the board procedures, and shows how your activities today influence your own image regardless of whether that is not your aim. For each subject secured, Berger clarifies why you should think about it, and she gives noteworthy advances total accommodating instruments applications on the best way to oversee it. My preferred part was Oops, I Did It Again in which she covers a considerable lot of the essential traps in a workplace. For every potential debacle she records the conceivable misstep, gives a significant case of it, and trains you in detail on the best way to fix it. Its unquestionably the book I wish Id had back in {ahem} 1992, when I entered the Real World. What's more, despite the fact that I dont hope to allude back to the book, Im happy to have a duplicate of it. Since I know exactly who Im going to offer it to. Welcome To The Real World: Finding Your Place, Perfecting Your Work, and Turning Your Job Into Your Dream Career is booked for discharge on April 22, 2014. It is presently accessible for preorders.

You are more than your degree, step outside the box. University of Manchester Careers Blog

You are more than your degree, step fresh. College of Manchester Careers Blog A few degrees are professional, some are not, yet whatever you concentrate there are in every case a greater number of alternatives after Uni than just actually utilizing your degree. You might be a researcher however you dont need to work in a lab! Let's be honest a degree is a bit of paper that says you read a subject for x years to a necessary norm. It doesn't consider your individual advantages, character, extracurricular experience and conditions. So why use it as the main premise to design your future. Your genuine degree will give you some pro information, a few abilities and conceivably the alternative to accomplish work experience like a situation or work on a task for an organization. On the off chance that you need to be strict about what your degree gives you check these out. You can choose how much you have these aptitudes or attributes. Watch History understudy Muneera discussing her degree. While you are going through 3+ years considering you ideally will get out and do some stuff, join a general public, play sport, volunteer, find a new line of work, coach different understudies, do a year abroad, converse with individuals and structure opinions. All these things help you to create aptitudes. You are developing, your third year self would most likely chuckle at a portion of your first year selfs desires, that is fine we as a whole learn by understanding, you will continue learning and advancing when you leave college and path past! See the master plan In the event that you state you are a topography understudy and dont comprehend what to do (I was) we may inquire as to whether there is anything identified with your subject you are keen on just to check, yet we dont have any anticipate that you should have a disclosure on the spot. Do some considering (alright we call it reflecting) consider what your identity is and what you deeply desire. What is extremely critical to you? Achievement, cash, liking what you do, area, long periods of work, stress, different duties? It doesnt must be always what do you need at this moment? (its ideal to have a drawn out arrangement, yet most people groups change) Can you precisely assess your own aptitudes strengths? Do you realize what you are acceptable at and what you appreciate (these may not be very similar things!) When you know somewhat about yourself you could begin taking a gander at occupations and assessing whether they meet your objectives Prospects Planner can be valuable now it will propose some activity jobs that meet your inclinations dependent on a short survey. You could control some in or out, and afterward go and look at some live opening to perceive what the occupations truly resemble, or converse with businesses at fairs organizing occasions. Imagine a scenario in which I secure the position I truly need and Im doing an inappropriate degree. I wouldnt alarm a lot there are a colossal measure of employments that take any degree and often its increasingly significant what abilities you have created. Of all shapes and sizes organizations can likewise contrast in their prerequisites so search around. For certain occupations you can do a Postgraduate transformation course for example IT, law, social work, educating medicine. Most dire outcome imaginable for example On the off chance that you need to turn into a specialist and you have done English that will be dubious BUT there can be different choices so dont surrender converse with us and keep a receptive outlook. Dont stress a lot over what others are doing. While it very well may be fascinating to discover what individuals from your degree do straightaway, it doesnt mention to you what they did after that which could be totally extraordinary. Regularly understudies reveal to every one of us my companions are doing this. They might be correct, they might not be right or it might be perfect for them. You have to assess what YOU need to do and afterward make a move in like manner. By doing whatever every other person is doing you could basically be burning through your time or totally worrying yourself! Converse with us about choices with or without your degree! All Careers guidance I don't have the foggiest idea what to do Undergraduate-featured vocation profession arranging Getting started

How to Describe Yourself In an Interview - Your Career Intel

Step by step instructions to Describe Yourself In an Interview - Your Career Intel It's quite often the main inquiry: How might you depict yourself? You should realize this feared inquiry question is coming, and you must be set up to answer it well. Let us assist you with concocting the words to depict yourself in a meeting. To begin, realize that this inquiry regularly is posed to simply to perceive how you handle yourself. Do you look certain? Will you talk smoothly about yourself? It is safe to say that you are set up for this meeting? It's an icebreaker question, yet it can likewise represent the deciding moment an early introduction. Your response to the depict yourself inquiry question should concentrate on what intrigues your questioner the most â€" they don't have to hear tales about your own life or leisure activities. Focus on portraying yourself as far as vocation and achievements. Start with an engaging sentence and follow with a portion of your latest, significant and important expert experience. A model: I'm a cutoff time situated self-starter who thinks inventively to concoct answers for my customers. I have 10 years of involvement with deals at Fortune 500 organizations, for example, X, Y and Z, and would bring best practices, conclusiveness and authority aptitude to this organization. Your reaction ought to be no longer than two sentences. Keep it short, graphic and fascinating. Can't retain two sentences? One will do fine and dandy. Model: I am excited worker who adores my calling and has enough of inspiration for both myself and my specialization. Work on saying it in the mirror. It may feel silly, however you can likewise alter your nonverbal correspondence â€" bears straight, head up, great eye to eye connection, grin! You've recently aced your first meeting test.