In a world where gender equity is the goal and pay transparency is an emerging reality, is your pay system good enough? Our audits & assessments can help you identify pay equity challenges and build more fair, competitive compensation practices.
In the IDEAL workplace, fair pay and gender equity is the norm, but it takes thoughtful design and good oversight to get there. Because pay equity is a top priority for your employees — and for investors, regulators and stakeholders — it is more important than ever to have well-designed compensation programs that promote transparency, consistency, and increased gender and other forms of equity.
Our high-quality audits and assessments apply the best thinking on how to promote gender, race and other forms of equity in your pay practices. Our robust quantitative and qualitative reviews go well beyond basic compliance to align effective compensation strategy with mission and values. We find the weak links in compensation program design and implementation that can increase risk and costs. We identify alternative approaches that advance equal opportunity and your strategic objectives.
We will maximize your ability to attract and retain diverse talent and help you transition to the emerging reality of greater pay transparency.
Pam led development of Department of Labor pay equity investigation guidance.
In 2011, Pam joined the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs as a Senior Advisor, tasked with developing new investigative procedures for reviewing pay practices at federal contractors. President Obama had asked the White House Equal Pay Task Force to identify barriers to effective federal enforcement of pay discrimination laws, and the Task Force had specifically flagged existing OFCCP guidelines for review and revision. After reviewing current procedures and talking with investigators and stakeholders, Pam worked with OFCCP and DOL to develop new policy guidance published as Directive 307 in 2013. She also spearheaded a program to train every field investigator on effective pay discrimination investigations and provided technical assistance on scores of audits, working closely with the agency’s statistical experts and labor economist and DOL attorneys. These new agency protocols are more effective at identifying systemic pay discrimination and better aligned with existing law. They provide a useful roadmap to any organization seeking to better understand patterns and trends of pay disparity in the workplace.
Pam and Cyrus have successfully implemented reforms at major U.S. companies.
Cyrus has led and co-led some of the largest and most significant race and gender employment discrimination cases in U.S. history, developing settlement reforms to reduce bias in pay, promotion, hiring and performance evaluation practices across key industries including financial services. Cyrus and Pam settled the ground-breaking Coca-Cola case, which led the company to establish widely recognized diversity and inclusion programs guided by leading outside experts to improve equity and opportunity for African-American employees and managers. Through his Women on Wall Street initiative, Cyrus has successfully identified and revamped compensation practices that systematically disadvantaged women in the financial services industry.
Pam is currently engaged in assessing pay equity issues and developing solutions in a range of contexts.
Since leaving the Department of Labor and establishing Working IDEAL, Pam has been asked to consult formally and informally on pay equity analysis and equitable compensation practices and to conduct workplace pay equity studies and trainings. She has been jointly selected by both parties to monitor implementation of an EEOC consent decree resolving Equal Pay Act violations and develop recommendations for improved practices and equity adjustments.
2017 Equal Pay Act Case Consent Decree Expert
In 2017, Pam was selected by both sides to serve as the settlement expert in an Equal Pay Act case involving the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a local government agency in Maryland. Her role included training and assessment, including identifying new criteria for compensation in Engineer positions to ensure gender equity. She worked with the employer to create an innovative, objective and transparent approach to setting salaries. Her pay equity training for managers was so well received she was asked to come back and present it to all the agency heads in the jurisdiction.
2017 Gender Pay Equity Study for Union Local
In 2017 Working IDEAL performed a gender pay equity study for a California union local representing some female dominated crafts working on film, television and commercial production crews. We used interviews, a survey, industry research and data analysis to compare their pay and their work with certain more male dominated crafts. In the process we learned more about the amazing and talented women and men who are working hard to deliver our onscreen stories — and about the history and practice of gender bias in the industry that the #MeToo campaign has shed so much important light on.
Working IDEAL provides trusted, effective and innovative advice on inclusive workplaces, diverse talent and fair pay to large and small companies, universities, non-profits, unions and other organizations across the nation.
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