How We’re Working Towards Pay Equity for All
By Dionna Smith, Christopher Praley, and Paul Green
Today, August 3rd, marks Black Women’s Equal Pay Day — the approximate day a Black woman must work into the new year (all of 2020 plus 8+ months of 2021) to match the amount her white male counterpart made the year prior (2020 alone). According to U.S. Census data, Black women’s weekly earnings currently amount to about 63 cents for every dollar made by white men.
It’s no secret that our country’s structural pay gaps are widespread and deeply rooted. These inequities have cascading effects, not just on employees’ long-term earnings but on their families and communities. Because almost 80 percent of Black mothers are the key breadwinners in their families, lost wages mean significantly less money to support their children as well as to save and invest for the future.
At Thumbtack, we’re committed to Pay Equity for All — which simply means making sure that everyone receives fair compensation for their work. We know that toppling a system of oppression that’s been hundreds of years in the making won’t happen in one fell swoop, but we believe that making this commitment in our own company — what our Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Dionna Smith calls “our own slice of the pie” — is an essential place to start.
Of course, there’s nothing simple about doing the work: It requires real commitment at the highest levels of our company, coupled with meaningful investments of time and resources as well as ongoing accountability. We’ve spent the last two years building teams and processes to track our progress and signal when we need to course correct.
Here’s a look at the commitments we have made and the processes we’ve implemented to ensure equity.
Pragmatic & Data-Driven Salary Offers
Especially in the fast-paced startup world, words like”standardize,” “scrutinize,” and “monitor” can be unfashionable. But when it comes to pay equity, they’re essential. While many companies will leave salary offers to the discretion of individual hiring managers, we take a methodical and consistent approach across the entire company that relies on market data (both current and historical).
When we are considering making an offer to a new employee, our Compensation Lead, Paul Green, and his team step in. We look at our compensation bands, the latest market data and the candidate’s level of experience to determine what their compensation package should be. We are also proud to be headquartered in the state of California, where employers are prohibited from asking employees salary histories — a practice that has been shown to perpetuate pay inequities.
Pay Equity Analysis
We want to make sure that everyone enters Thumbtack on a level playing field, but we also know that’s just the beginning. People Analytics Manager, Chris Praley, and his team help us to deliver on our commitment to Pay Equity for All by analyzing company-wide compensation regularly.
As part of this process, we embed equity analysis into every step of our performance and compensation cycles. Our work doesn’t stop after an employee is hired. Chris and his team implement a wealth of tools across numerous moments in an employee’s compensation journey to constantly calibrate for pay equity. This includes, but is not limited to, a look at certain statistical tests, and detailed analyses to ensure we identify and mitigate any potential bias.
These measures look like statistical tests to answer the following question: are peers of different genders or race-ethnic groups treated differently? We start in the performance cycle, where we run stats tests to see if there are statistically significant differences in the spread of performance ratings. We also run these tests for promotion rates. Why? Because these performance ratings and promotion decisions then turn into salary adjustments.
Once our performance cycle inputs are measured and determined to be equitable, we again run stats testing salary adjustments to make sure employees of the same job and performance level are not receiving significantly different salary adjustments. All of these analyses ensure we identify and mitigate bias by the time the compensation cycle comes to a close.
Rapid Growth and Real Accountability
As members of the DEI, People Analytics and Compensation teams, each of us work towards our common goal from a different angle — and all of us take comfort in our partnership. We need accountability from multiple checks and balances and multiple efforts within our organization because the blatant and inadvertent biases that lead to pay inequity are so entrenched.
As Thumbtack grows, so has the diversity of our employees. Our DEI team continues to expand, and our People Analytics team is gathering the data we’ll need to pressure test our actions and decisions over time. Our hope is that we’ll consistently show significant progress in three years, five years, and beyond — and even help to make a wider impact as we work from the inside out. In the future, we hope to invest in more granular data and insights, such as looking more deeply at the intersectionality of race and gender.
