The Closing the Gender Pay Gap report offers a step-by-step guide to ensuring equal pay for equal work, drawn from strategies and tips developed by some of Australia’s top businesses over recent years. The resource is designed to help organisations large and small accelerate their efforts to achieve pay equity.
FlexCareers employer partners that have signed the report include Aurecon, Medibank , Incitec Pivot, ANZ, EY, Deloitte, Vicinity Centres, Collingwood Football Club, Lendlease, CBA, PwC, Stockland, KPMG, Charter Hall, and AGL. They are joined by leaders from across Australian business, education, sport and Government in publicly committing to better analysing the Gender Pay Gap by looking at how men and women are remunerated in like-for-like roles, and taking positive action to eradicate it.
According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Australia’s average gender pay gap currently sits at 15.3 per cent, reflecting the overall position of women in the workforce. This difference is driven by a range of factors, including the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions and significant disparities in earnings between male- and female dominated industries and occupations.
The Closing the Gender Pay Gap report explains the various ways in which gender pay gaps can emerge and provides methodologies for assessing and ensuring equity through different remuneration types. These include fixed, variable, total and benefits – and other pay-related mechanisms such as commissions, location loading, non-monetary opportunities and benefits, and flexible working.
The comprehensive report offers a best practice approach to prevent and respond to like-for-like pay gaps covering: the timing and frequency of gender pay gap reviews; the interrelationship with performance reviews and processes; the relationship to recruitment and retention; to salary setting; and in addressing the gender wealth gap through, for example, superannuation payment policies.
“Addressing the national gender pay gap requires the effort of our whole community,” said Libby Lyons, Director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. “Employers must step up and play their part. All leaders have the power to analyse their data and take action on pay gaps within their organisations.”
The signatories to the Closing the Gender Pay Gap report are inviting other Australian leaders to join forces with them in addressing these issues. They include leaders from Business, Property, Sport Architecture, the public service and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Steve McCann, Group CEO and Managing Director of FlexCareers partner Lendlease, whose organisation’s experiences features as one of the four case studies in the report, is a signatory. “There is no excuse for men to be paid more than women for work that has the same accountability, breadth and difficulty, and for which they have comparable performance, competence and experience,” he said. “We’ve learned that gender-based pay gaps can be both common and insidious – particularly in historically male-dominated sectors. Having regular, scrutinised and actioned reporting is a game changer – real-time access to relevant data becomes hard to ignore and demands action.”
MCC Founder and Chair, Elizabeth Broderick, said having leaders step up on this issue would accelerate the advancement of gender equality in our society: “This is a joint and concerted effort to help make unjustifiable pay differences in like-for-like roles for men and women a matter of history in Australia,” she said.
The Closing the Gender Pay Gap report and resources within was developed from, and builds upon, work and leadership undertaken by the Property Male Champions of Change with support from EY.
FlexCareers is partnered with WGEA and supports organisations that are committed to supporting women’s careers. Together with our employer partners, FlexCareers is actively working to improve female participation in the workforce and achieve gender equality in the workforce. \
Our sophisticated careers platform and talent matching technology, together with our Return to Work programs, training and consulting services ensure that our partners can attract, engage and develop talented women.
FlexCareers is proud to be a WGEA Pay Equity Supporter
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