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Focus on Pay Equity When Automating Compensation in 2024

Written by Salary.com Staff

February 9, 2024

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With technology evolving at a rapid pace, various companies are seeking to automate pay. While automation can provide efficiency, companies must be careful to ensure pay equity. In 2024, a focus on fairness must remain front and center. Companies automating pay must thoroughly audit their pay systems, find areas of bias, and implement controls.

Transparency around pay scales and promotion metrics is the key. Employees want to understand how their companies make pay decisions. Automation provides opportunities but must not come at the expense of equal pay. As companies move forward, they must balance automation and ethics.

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Automating Rewards Processes

To achieve pay equity, companies must focus on automating pay processes using data and AI. It can help remove human bias and ensure fair pay across the board.

Companies must use data analysis tools to audit their current pay and reward practices. The audit must check for pay gaps based on gender, race, or other factors. It must look at the performance review and growth of employees to ensure there are no systemic issues.

After finding the issues, companies can start using AI and automation to fix them. For example, AI can help set appropriate pay scales based on job requirements and local market rates. It can suggest fair pay raises and promotion based on performance and experience as well.

To build trust in the new systems, companies must be transparent about how they work. Employees must understand the data and criteria used to set their pay. Automated systems are only as fair as the data that powers them.

Most companies now use a mix of software, data, and human judgment to set pay and promotions. AI and automation focusing on pay equity  helps companies reward and promote employees in a fair manner.

Pursuing Pay Equity and Better Analytics

To achieve pay equity in 2024, companies must invest in advanced analytics and make data-driven decisions. By analyzing employee pay, roles, performance reviews, and other metrics, companies can uncover, and address pay gaps.

With machine learning, companies can detect complex patterns of unequal pay that may   go unnoticed. It considers factors such as job title, tenure, experience, and performance to know  notable pay gaps that persist between groups. By finding these gaps, companies can set fair pay raises and make things right in a fair manner.

To be most effective, companies must assess:

  • Pay data by gender, ethnicity, and other factors
  • Pay levels for jobs held by marginalized groups
  • Promotion and raise rates to spot barriers to growth

By pursuing pay equity through data analysis, companies can reduce legal risks while enhancing employee satisfaction and productivity. This effort contributes to an improved public image as a fair and inclusive workplace. While automation plays a role, human judgment remains crucial in decoding results and making decisions.

In 2024, data-driven pay practices help in closing the pay gap, ensuring equal pay for equal work across all employees.

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Managing Compensation Spending

To ensure pay equity when automating pay, companies must carefully monitor pay spending. Companies updating job descriptions and pay bands must review their current employee pay to ensure fairness before implementing broad changes.

Experts suggest analyzing existing pay data as the first step. This helps uncover any pay gaps based on gender, race, or factors unrelated to performance or experience. Next, companies must evaluate whether  current pay levels reflect employees' tasks, skills, experience, and work. Pay managers may need to adjust employee pay or overall pay bands. This ensures correction of any issues before shifting to an automated system.

Constant tracking of pay spending and pay equity is a key as well. Regular pay audits help detect any emerging pay gaps in the new system so companies can promptly make changes. Pay experts highlight the importance of not solely relying on technology and algorithms to set employee pay. Human judgment and oversight remain vital to ensure fairness, especially during the initial phase of the new pay system.

With commitment to pay equity, companies can boldly automate their pay processes. This ensures employees receive fair pay based on the value of their work.

CompAnalyst as a Solution

CompAnalyst is a pay management tool that provides pay equity analysis to help companies achieve fair pay. It leverages data to provide a fair analysis of a company’s pay levels and pay equity risks.

Using CompAnalyst, HR and business leaders can gain visibility into pay gaps based on gender, race/ethnicity, and other factors. The software examines a company’s actual pay data to uncover any equity issues. It considers valid drivers of pay such as job level, performance, and experience.

CompAnalyst identifies specific employees that may be at risk of unfair pay. It  suggests suitable pay adjustments to resolve identified equity issues. By using CompAnalyst for pay equity analysis, companies can ensure a fair and inclusive pay and rewards programs.

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Briefly, CompAnalyst gives companies the tools they need to evaluate, and resolve pay equity risks. It enables a fair, just, and compliant pay program. Using software to analyze and adjust pay can help companies gain valuable insight and address pay gaps. It fosters a work culture where all employees feel respected and empowered.

While automation is a big part of pay management in 2024, the focus must remain on pay equity. Companies cannot just automate processes and assume fair outcomes. They must consider how to build fairness into the algorithms, audit for bias, and have human oversight.

The goal must be empowering people, not undermining groups. With the right approach, automation can help remove human bias and disparities from pay. But, using technology does not conclude the work. Pay equity must remain front and center as pay evolves.

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