The Resolution to Pay Disparities
In an article for the Society for Human Resource Management, author Dana Wilkie provided a thorough and insightful analysis on settling pay disparity issues between two employees performing the same jobs; she discussed some of the potential reasons why some pay disparities are justified, especially in relation to the market value for the job itself, differences in experience and skill, and other criteria.
At the end of the article, she concluded with a quote from a local government hiring manager that emphasizes the importance of carefully explaining pay disparities whenever they occur and ensure that they have merit to them.
“We are very careful to have an explanation based on experience, education, skills, abilities or additional duties being performed by one employee that the others may not have, even though they have the same title. The only time we ever gave in was when we had an employee who was doing a great job and complained about another person making more even though they were at the same level. It was explained that [the higher-paid worker] had taken on some additional duties. So, we ended up revising [the lower-paid worker’s] job description to include extra duties and gave her an increased salary as compensation for those duties.”
In light of the valuable insights Dana uncovered in her article, one revelation is certain — these issues are related to the problem of a lack of transparency and sufficient information on the salary profile for a particular position. These issues occur in every industry, including healthcare.
For potential candidates, it can be difficult for them to obtain reliable, accurate, and thorough information regarding different aspects of the positions they’re applying for, which could happen for several reasons. First, much of the salary data that permeates websites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor are often unreliable; relying primarily on testimonial data from former and current employees that may not remember the exact numbers for their salary, job bonuses, and other relevant metrics. Further, there is no universally agreed reporting method to ensure the bases are equivalent — some people will include the value of their benefits package while others may only state their base salary.
Second, in relation to the first reason given above, salary data can be misleading and often not very comprehensive. The salary data you may find online might only be relevant for a particular time period and may not include some of the hidden bonuses that could come with a position, such as extra bonuses, equity payments, and other perks. All of this information isn’t readily available at the convenience of the user, requiring additional research in order to dig up this information.
Finally, it can be difficult to assess or settle the issue of whether or not a given wage is appropriate or realistic in relation to a position’s current market value and other factors (i.e. years of experience, degree level, etc). As noted in the article, author Dana Wilkie pointed out that much of the pay disparity complaints revolve around inconsistencies in implementing pay raises or pay cuts.
With all of these issues in mind, it can be seen that pay disparities will remain challenging for hiring managers and employees to navigate when not done carefully. However, with the introduction of Hiring Accelerator, we’ll aim to help alleviate much of the communication hurdles that typically would come with these disputes.
With Hiring Accelerator™, candidates can directly interact with hiring managers. A hiring manager initiates a job offer by sending in offer documents (i.e. job benefits, legal terms, etc), job details, and job terms (such as salary, bonuses, etc) to a potential candidate. The candidate and the hiring manager can directly correspond with the hiring manager over the app’s secure chat feature in real-time to discuss and negotiate job terms as well as any other topic related to the job offer.
In addition, the candidate can also access a dashboard that compares the offer terms for a given position to the overall market data on similar positions — data obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For example, if a hiring manager offered $35,000 in salary for a medical assistant, the candidate could check these numbers against the salary market and see in which percentile does that value fall under (such as 95th percentile, 80th percentile, etc). Since the market data in the app changes depending on the geographical area the candidate resides in, the candidate can make a more informed judgment on the quality of the job offer terms using data that gives a better sense of how much they could be paid.
The features described above are some examples of the ways in which Hiring Accelerator helps potential job candidates navigate through the uncertain waters of offer negotiation and connect better with hiring managers.
With more information at the hiring manager’s and the job candidate’s fingertips, Hiring Accelerator not only streamlines the offer negotiation process into a more accessible manner but also reduces the miscommunication and misinformation issues that often lead to work disputes such as pay disparity.
