Apr 14 2022

Top Employer Concerns in 2022: Pay Transparency and Employee Benefits

2022 Top Compensation Trends

Pay Transparency Trends

As employees begin questioning their pay, while pay transparency continues to grow in popularity, employers are scrambling to defend their pay practices.

Salary information is becoming more available both formally, through legislation, and informally, through social media posts. Employees now have the valuable information they need to leverage conversations with their managers and challenge current compensation.

States are beginning to require the publication of salary ranges for all classifications. Some examples of the trends in the legislation include:

CA Equal Pay Act – Employers cannot ask about the previous salary and must disclose pay ranges if asked during an interview

CO Equal Pay for Equal Work – Employers must include salary ranges and benefits information in every job posting as well as disclose promotion opportunities and keep track of job descriptions

NY – Employers must post maximums and minimums on all job postings or promotions by November 2022 (extended from May 15th)

More casually, there is a societal shift to make salary information less taboo. Coworkers are no longer ashamed of sharing how much they make in the company. A poll conducted in 2022 by YouGov Plc found that of their sample of 2,500 adults, 42% of Gen Z workers, ages 18-25, and 40% of millennial employees, ages 26-41, have shared their salary information with a coworker or other professional contact.

Many companies are not prepared to discuss the warrants for current salary ranges and are left with unhappy employees who still have pay concerns. Payscale has reported that employees are 50% more likely to leave if they think they are being paid below market, even if they aren’t. Some 57% of people paid at the standard market level believe they are underpaid, and 42% of those paid above the market think they are underpaid. This highlights the value of a compensation study where you can provide employees the ease of mind that they are being compensated based on their talent and skills in a competitive organization.

Benefits Trends

Total compensation is more than just cash; it’s the entire package that includes benefits available for employees based on budget. Companies are getting creative to make sure their employees perceive a good work/life balance. With changes in work models, like remote or hybrid arrangements, we are also seeing more companies jumping on the trend to offer unlimited time off.

The United States is the only developed country with no federal law requiring employers to offer paid holidays to employees. But companies are still trending to achieve work-life balance through this new perk: Unlimited Paid Time Off. While this is a debated topic, with people worried that this may be a trap to keep people constantly thinking about work, a recent study shows that 82% of employees that have unlimited PTO have the best rates of work-life balance. Competitive PTO (limited or unlimited) is more than just a mechanism to attract and retain top talent. These packages make business sense, especially for companies prioritizing innovation where we are looked at as a model to set expectations for productivity. To do good work, people must take care of themselves. Recovery is a lifestyle practice making its way into industries where creation and innovation are the organization’s backbones.

If you’re looking to expand your benefits program, we welcome you to get inspiration from the list below for the most popular benefits and perks to include in your plan. We have compiled these options for you to consider as you continue to build your employee engagement.

Consider These Benefits Trends:

Flextime and Work-at-Home Options
Flexible holidays
Commuter Assistance
Performance Bonus
Vacation reimbursement: one-time bonus to use while taking time off
Healthy Cafeterias and Snack Machines
Home Office Stipend
In-office Career Development
Wellness Facilities and Support
Annual Learning Stipends for participating in industry certifications, seminars, or classes
Generous Parental and Caregiver Leave
Volunteer Time Exchange
Free Desktop Music
Personal Care Services – Bring in a stylist once a month for haircuts or try dry cleaning drop off
Discounted Access to Company Products/Services
Stock/Stock Options/Equity
Gym membership
Insurance coverage for you and your dependents

Affirmative Action Planning

With federal and state agencies prioritizing pay equity, you must identify, study, and address potential areas of vulnerability and help your pay system achieve your goals for equity, competitiveness, and compliance. This Risk Analysis is a report designed to provide clients a gateway to viewing potential pay equity liabilities across multiple tiers by leveraging comparisons by job title, job group, experience or seniority, and EEO category.

In our efforts to help organizations achieve pay equity and move closer to establishing equal pay for equal work, Blue Whale has launched Blue Whale AAP. Our Affirmative Action Planning supports government contractors and any business that wants them as a customer to stay in compliance with federal regulations easily.

This methodological process starts with data cleansing and your workforce activity data reconciliation. From this, we plan development, data system coding, reporting, and monitoring your hiring, promotion, and termination practices. Next, we develop an Adverse Impact Analysis to do potential bias testing in your HR practices to ensure we have the most accurate narrative.

Learn more

4/14/2022

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Pay Transparency and Minimum Wage Increases: Are You Prepare to Meet the New Challenges?

If You Post A Job, You Must Post A Salary Scale

Starting in May and following a national trend in other major U.S. cities, New York City’s employers will be required to post salary ranges in their job postings. The law exempts temporary staffing firms as they provide this information to potential candidates. The legislation, meant to help correct pay inequities and discrimination, will make it unlawful not to include in job listings the minimum and maximum salary offered for any job in New York City. The range for the listed maximum and minimum salary would extend from the lowest to the highest salary that the employer, in good faith, believes it would pay for the advertised job, promotion, or transfer. Other municipalities are likely to follow as the law is a more significant trend toward pay transparency.

View a List of Cities Requiring Posting Salary Ranges

Pay Equity Efforts in the Public Sector Suffers a Setback

In a setback to proponents of workforce progressive policies, a law requiring board quotas from publicly traded companies with HQs in CA was declared unconstitutional. The law, Assembly Bill 979, signed in 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newson, set forth to increase boards’ composition by requiring publicly traded companies to have board members from underrepresented communities, including people of several races and ethnic groups and people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Proponents of the law argued that adding underrepresented groups to the board would aid racial and justice equality in the workplace. However, Judicial Watch, a D.C. nonprofit conservative advocacy group, filed a lawsuit in 2020, arguing the law’s racial, ethnic, sexual preference and gender-based quotas violated the state’s constitution’s equal protection clause. In response, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Green ruled that the law violated the state constitution.

Learn More About our Pay Equity Services

Gender Pay Equity – Trending in the Wrong Direction

An initial analysis of proxy compensation disclosure by Equilar, a firm specializing in data-driven solutions for business development, board recruiting, and executive compensation, suggests that gender pay gaps increased in 2021, and in doing so, the gains recorded in 2019 and 2020 have essentially disappeared. According to an initial review of proxy statements relative to 2021, the median pay for women CEOs in the Equilar 500 was $11.8 million, or 18% lower than the median $14.5 million awarded to men. The initial figures seem to follow a two-year compensation difference between men and women. In reviewing past proxy information by gender, data suggests that the average pay for women went from $12.2 million in 2019 to $11.8. The average compensation for men has moved from $12.2 to $14.5 million for the exact period. Even though public and private companies work to adopt pay equity policies, the conversation around gender equity will likely grow louder. Also, this may activate boards and regulatory agencies for measures to minimize the gains achieved in the last few years.

Minimum Wage To Increase, Again, In Parts of Los Angles County

In time for most companies’ budgeting season, companies in the unincorporated part of Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles will need to manage another new round of increases to their minimum wage scale. The minimum wage in unincorporated LA County will be increasing from $15.00 to $15.96 per hour on July 1, 2022. The ordinance applies to employees who work at least two hours a week within unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. The minimum wage in the City of Los Angeles will increase from $15 to $16.04. The wage scalation index, tied to consumer prices, and part of the City’s effort to curb poverty, has spiked considerably over the last few months, pushing the City to boost hourly rates above those in the County. This latest increase is a continuation of the annual increases that began in 2016 and now apply to all employers regardless of employee count. The minimum wage will continue to increase each year on July 1 based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.