New Zealand 'a decade behind' disclosing pay gap data

We know from substantial research that a diverse team is a strong team but are you paying equally for diversity or is the gender and ethnicity pay gap an issue in your business?

“Unless you look and analyse and report, you don’t know if you’ve got a problem," says Dellwyn Stuart, CEO of the YWCA Auckland and co-leader on the #mindthegap project. 

Stuart has spent the past six months encouraging and educating 160 of New Zealand’s largest employers on the importance of knowing their gender and ethnicity pay gaps, and actively working towards decreasing those gaps. Her work was ahead of the launch of a new public registry that lists those 160 employers, alongside a link to their public gender and ethnicity pay gap data. A cross beside their name denoted they don’t make their gender and ethnicity pay gap data public.

 #mindthegap was launched on International Women’s Day (March 8) with 47 companies sharing what their current gender pay gaps are and 8 sharing their ethnicity pay gaps. Globally, the project isn’t new. In the UK, where the scheme decreased the pay gap by 90%, companies with over 250 employees are legislated to make their gender pay gap data public.

So how will New Zealand’s optional registry have any effect?  “There’s varying degrees of approach around the world but it’s fair to say that New Zealand is about a decade behind”, Stuart told HRD. “…but the key values at the moment are trust, transparency and honesty, that’s what is driving organisations to go we want to put this information out there”.

One of the early adopters of pay gap transparency was Westpac’s David McLean, who released the company's data when their gender pay gap was at 30%. Detractors said it would be bad for Westpac’s reputation but ultimately, people respected that they were willing to be honest and commit to fixing it. “We're in a period where trust and transparency are really vital”, says Stuart. “Forty-seven businesses already reporting is a real indication that this is becoming normal business practice”.

Forty-seven willing businesses is a good start but that’s a strike rate of 27%, which means a whopping 73% that aren’t publishing. “There’s no kind of backlash towards it; there are some saying we’ll get there later in the year and there are some saying no, we’re not going to do that”, said Stuart.

#mindthegap will continue to work with and encourage the businesses that haven’t reported to start reporting. The registry will be updated monthly, and Stuart is expecting good uptake in the coming months. “For some, it’s just giving them that push over the line because they are measuring their pay gaps already, they’re just not reporting it”.

For some though, it comes down to not knowing what you don’t know. While Stuart was encouraging interest in the project, businesses often told her that there was no issue with pay gaps in their companies but when they ran the data through the calculation the data revealed a different story. “If you don’t focus on it and try to understand it, you can’t really say, that’s not a problem”.

“People evaluating what part work plays in their lives is expected this year and we're in for a period where trust and transparency is really vital for organizations to own up and focus on the things that people care about”.