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opportunity : Diversity Positive recruitment
:
Tips and tools
Diversity-positive salary setting
Practices to avoid
1 One of the more diversity-negative
practices in salary setting is to use the candidate’s previous
salary as the starting point for determining the salary to be offered
with the Center.
2 This practice is highly discriminatory
and can often lead to inequitable salaries across a range of people
within an organization who are doing similar work, with similar responsibilities
and similar competencies. It particularly discriminates against women
who may have more interrupted career patterns than men.
3 While the appointee’s previous salary
cannot be entirely disregarded, it is very much a secondary,
not the primary, consideration.
Looking at half the remuneration picture
4 Worse than being discriminatory, this practice
is quite irrational. The total value that most employees receive from
their employment is a combination of their salary and their benefits.
Whether all their benefits have a direct cash value (cost) or an indirect
value, they can nevertheless be estimated. The benefits may comprise
as much as 50 percent (in some cases, more) of the total value
that the employee receives from his/her employment.
5 Consequently it is useless knowing that one candidate has a
salary of $x, and another a salary of $1.4x, unless the Center
also knows the value of each candidate’s benefits. And unless
the Center has also calculated the value of the benefits it would be
offering for each candidate.
Developing diversity-positive salary practices
6 There is one basic principle governing
the salary paid to any employee: to achieve a balance between:
a)
the employee’s external
worth, i.e. in the external
marketplace; and
b)
the employee’s internal worth, i.e. the value of his/her
work by comparison with colleagues undertaking similar work, with similar
responsibilities and with similar competencies.
If the Center gets (a) seriously wrong, the employee
leaves it for a better-paying employer (in this context, Centers need
to consider both salary and benefits). If the Center gets (b) wrong,
it ends up with serious internal disharmony.
7 There is no “best way” for achieving
equitable salaries. However, one approach that has proven successful in
scientific organizations is to have a basic formula that calculates the
appointee’s salary based on his/her qualifications and experience
(i.e. items that can readily be quantified.) To put it another way:
- since the candidate meets the minimum competency requirements for appointment,
- but many competencies are difficult to quantify,
- then focus on quantifiable factors (such as level of qualifications, length of experience) to differentiate salaries.
8 For example, the Center may be filling an Agronomist Class 2 position, for which the minimum academic qualification is a Bachelors degree, together with a minimum of 5 years’ professional experience. Consequently:
- an appointee with these minimum qualifications and experience would start on the base salary for an Agronomist Class 2;
- an appointee with a Bachelors degree and 8 years’ experience might be appointed 3 increments above the base salary (i.e. giving credit for the advancement that a person would have received if she/he had originally started with the minimum qualifications and experience);
- an appointee with a Masters degree might be given credit for the additional higher study, which might be equated with 2 years’ professional experience, and thus would be appointed 2 increments above the base salary;
- alternatively, a person with a Masters degree but only 3 years’ professional experience might be seen to meet the minimum qualifications and experience requirement for appointment to Agronomist Class 2 (i.e. the Masters degree would be regarded as the equivalent of a Bachelors degree plus 2 years’ experience); thus a Masters plus 3 years’ work experience would be equated to a Bachelors degree plus 5 years’ experience;
- a person with a period of sub-professional work (e.g. as a science technician) might receive 50% credit for that period; the period would not be ignored simply because it was sub-professional.
9 This sort of approach
should not be applied inflexibly. For example, a Center might need to
pay one appointee a higher salary than the formula suggests because she/he
is receiving a higher salary+benefits from their current employer.
10 However, Centers should avoid
paying below their formula’s “minimum
salary rate” for the appointee’s qualifications and experience.
This particularly discriminates against women and, possibly, people from
certain ethnic backgrounds who are currently in low-paying jobs.
© CGIAR Gender & Diversity
Program 2006