By Carolyn Rhodes, Senior Associate.
Prioritizing pay equity may seem like an additional task for nonprofit leaders and board members to tackle, but it can have significant benefits for both the organization and society. By promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, nonprofit leaders can create a positive impact on their employees, stakeholders, and the community they serve.
Pay equity ensures that all employees are compensated fairly and equally, regardless of their position within the organization, gender, race, age, or ethnicity. Prioritizing pay equity can foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace, which can attract and retain talent, improve employee morale, and advance the organization’s mission. Additionally, pay equity is a critical component of social justice, promoting equality and fairness in society.
To ensure pay equity, nonprofit leaders and board members can take the following steps:
Establish clear and transparent pay policies: Create and communicate organizational pay policies that outline the criteria for determining salaries, including experience, education, job descriptions, and performance.
Conduct regular salary reviews: Regularly review employee salaries to ensure that they are consistent with the organization’s pay policies, and to identify any pay disparities. Organizations can use data from similar organizations to research salaries and tailor those findings to align with their organizational budget and pay policies. Remember, what works for one organization may not work for another.
Avoid bias in salary decisions: Ensure salary decisions are based solely on objective criteria, such as job performance, responsibilities, skills, and experience, rather than on factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, or tenure.
Use salary bands: Salary bands define the range of pay within job grades. Salary bands help ensure that pay is consistent across similar positions, and that employees are paid based on their skills and experience. Salary bands stabilize the organization’s budget for the year, help with job offers, and can be used to forecast salary increases year after year.
Provide professional development opportunities: Help employees acquire the skills and experience needed to advance within the organization and increase their earning potential.
Budget actions to achieve pay equity may need to be staged over multiple years but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get started. Break the work up into chunks by defining a first step – whether that’s initiating a values discussion among the board, defining pay policies, or researching salary histories. Call on moss+ross if we can help!
