Rural Workplaces Need Pay Equity, Too
We’ve made it through the history and economic lessons about pay equity, and we’ve even learned how pay equity impacts people of varying identities. Now let’s go back to the example I shared in the introduction. Do you remember the $25 million surprise that my nonprofit boss shared with me? She said the extra money was dedicated to our staff and we needed to figure out a plan.
When my boss shared this news, I really didn’t know what to do next. I knew what I DID want: our employees, the most valuable part of this organization, to feel this once in a lifetime opportunity was well invested. We wanted to build a plan that was meaningful for employees and sustainable for the organization.
The pay equity journey happens in four phases: preparation, assessment, leadership buy-in, and implementation. In this chapter, I’m going to outline the preparation process that I used for our pay equity journey. For the most part, it’s the same process I still use today when working with my clients. How you prepare will look a bit different for your organization, but the steps are the same.
Let’s begin with the goal of the preparation phase. Preparation is all about centering employee voice, understanding your talent landscape, and gaining leadership buy-in. For this example, the nonprofit had 68 employees with a mixture of full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees. The nonprofit operated like a small college campus with residential dorms, a dining hall and coffee shop, art studios, an art supply store, art gallery, and additional facilities across a 420-acre campus.
Preparation Step #1 - Get employee feedback.
My first step was moving into research mode. First, I went back to review employee feedback. At the time, we didn’t have a regular employee survey system, so much of my feedback was anecdotal - discussions during new employee orientation, while in line for lunch, and during our annual benefits enrollment. I knew immediately that we had a gap with employee feedback, so I had a starting place.
Part of the decision-making process included a review of qualitative and quantitative employee reports. In a recent strategic planning process, we had asked our employees for feedback through focus groups. We also had survey results from the previous year when we applied for a national When Work Works award with the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). Based on this research, we identified three focus areas:
Raise employee pay to living wages
Align staff capacity with organizational needs
Redesign of internal workflow for efficiency
It’s important to note here that pay equity becomes much broader than base salaries once you dig into the details. Aligning staff capacity meant increasing hours for some part-time and seasonal employees. And to improve internal workflow we had to redesign some jobs and make technology investments to reduce physical paperwork.
Many companies only get this far because they hit a wall of OVERWHELM. And that’s okay. Your first step may be just starting an employee feedback process. Employee feedback is CRUCIAL for pay equity AND your overall talent strategy, so start there if that’s what you need. I’ve included our employee survey in the appendix so you have a framework. This survey is based on the SHRM Effective Workplace Index.
I decided to begin with digging into a comment that I kept hearing from employees:
“Everyone says that it’s cheaper to live here in the mountains, but I don’t think that’s true.”
This is something I had heard from people in every role at our nonprofit: coffee shop, supply store, technology employees and housekeepers. I watched our housekeepers work so hard every day and then go home to their families to work just as hard. I knew these housekeepers would find more dignity and purpose in their jobs when they were being paid what they deserved.
I didn’t believe it either - that it’s cheaper to live in the mountains - so I explored the cost of living in our area. This led me to step two.
Ready for more? You can read the full chapter when my new pay equity book releases Summer 2024.