EVA JESMIATKA: Welcome to our next video on providing pay clarity and visibility. My name is Eva Jesmiatka, and I'm here today with my colleague Tom Wooldridge. Welcome, Tom. Great to have you here.
TOM WOOLDRIDGE: Thanks, Eva.
EVA JESMIATKA: In today's video, we're going to talk about the EU pay transparency directive. And we're going to continue the conversation. In our previous videos, we mostly spoke about what companies need to do to get their pay, their structures, and policies ready.
But today we actually want to focus on what companies need to do to get their leaders, managers, and employees ready. And it's quite a big topic. So this is actually going to be part one of two videos in which we're going to cover this topic.
But maybe to take a step back, Tom, and thinking about the timelines that we're looking at here, we know that the directive is not going to come into force for another few years. So when we think about communications, do companies already need to start thinking about that now even though we know that it's going to take a few years before this all comes into force?
TOM WOOLDRIDGE: Yeah. So it might feel like a long time, but it's very important that organizations start planning their approach as soon as possible. The reasons for that are firstly that if you're thinking about the different stakeholders that are involved in this, this is not just a communication challenge.
This is a this is a change management challenge. You need to be thinking about your different categories of leaders, of stakeholders within HR that are all involved in this, and think about how you engage them with the topic. So that's very important.
The other reason that it's very important is because when you're thinking about your general readiness for pay transparency, it's definitely around your reward programs, and salary ranges that might already exist, and some technical design work.
But it's also around the level of education that managers have, leaders have, that employees have in relation to pay. And so it's important that you think about that as a current state and think about where you need to get to over a three-year period. So it's not just about what happens in that 2027 milestone.
And then I guess the last thing to say on that is that although organizations will be starting from different points, you might already have salary ranges. You might have a clear leveling structure understood by all employees. You need to do that work upfront to understand what you have in place and what you don't have in place so that you can plan over the time that you've got between now and 2027.
EVA JESMIATKA: Yeah. And, like you said, very valid points. Organizations will all be probably in slightly different positions. So having a good understanding of where are we now as a business and where do we need to get to will be very important.
If you think about the communications maybe starting off at the highest level, what are the things that companies need to think about when they think about the company-wise communications in relation to this?
TOM WOOLDRIDGE: Yeah. So the most important thing that organizations need to be starting to do now and a lot of leading organizations already have in place is developing a strong pay equity narrative. So that is your North Star around how all aspects of reward are managed, reviewed, assessed, how different pay programs are designed in future. So it's an important thing to have in place internally within HR.
But it's also the starting point for establishing a sense of trust between employees and an organization around how those things are managed. And aside from broad philosophical statements around what you want to be doing as an employer in relation to pay equity, that typically has a series of commitments that have already been made or will be made within an organization in relation to pay equity.
So that might be regularly benchmarking salary against the market. It might be delivering consistent, and fair, and equitable pay, and making sure that any differences in pay are for legitimate drivers like location or job-level skills, experience, work conditions. So very important to have that in place.
And then the other thing that's part of your pay equity narrative aside from those commitments around how reward will be managed are the connections to your diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy and the rationale for why it's important for you as a business.
So attracting and retaining diverse talent to lead to superior business outcomes, being the socially responsible and right thing to do as an organization, part of a broad, good governance as an organization, and aligning with latest legislation. All of that's very important to have upfront for current prospective employees, shareholders, the external stakeholder landscape as well.
EVA JESMIATKA: Yeah. So a lot of different audiences. And I'm quite keen, Tom, to actually-- would you dive into those different audience groups in a bit more detail to really get to the point of what do companies need to think about when they consider those different audience groups?
As mentioned, a lot of things to cover. So I suggest that we cover that part in our next video and that we're going to close this video off here. And then hopefully, we'll see you in our next video where we continue the conversation. I'll be here again together with Tom. So we hope to see you there.
