SEATTLE — May 26, 2021 – Nearly half of all workers who needed a “pandemic leave” expect to make less money when they return to the workforce than they did before, according to a survey¹ from Syndio, the leading Equity Tech software platform. Women who took leave were more likely to expect a pay cut than were men — and since overall, more women left the workforce during the pandemic², this mass re-hiring is likely to exacerbate pay inequities within companies.
Syndio today announced the availability of Pay Finder, the first ever solution to help companies avoid pay inequities when deciding on starting pay. Historically, companies looked at factors like competitive, market pay and past pay when determining a new hire’s starting pay. Pay Finder helps employers remove bias from decisions around what to pay employees when hiring and offering raises and promotions, factoring in both market rates and internal equity to provide hiring managers and compensation professionals a competitive and equitable pay range. Pay Finder is available as an extension to Syndio’s flagship PayEQ software-as-a-service (SaaS) analytics product.
“This moment has the potential to be a perfect storm for pay inequity. Women who left the workforce are coming back in greater numbers than men, and until now companies haven’t had a single solution to help them create equity in pay from the moment of hire,” said Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio. “Pay Finder is the only software available that provides guidance to balance market pay with internal equity, empowering human decisions about key salary moments with data that helps eliminate bias.”
According to the survey, 54.4 percent of women who left the workforce during the pandemic — whether that was because of layoffs, needing to care for children, or another pandemic-related reason — expect to be paid less when they return to the workforce. Of men who left the workforce, 45.9 percent expect to make less.
About Pay Finder
Today most companies determine starting pay based on market data, a new employee’s past pay, and salary negotiations. Unconscious bias has a significant influence on pay decisions, and internal pay equity is often not a part of the equation. According to Gartner, this oversight can open companies to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in annual remediation costs as well as legal and brand reputation risks.
Pay Finder analyzes market rates, internal employee and compensation data, and specifics of the new hire, such as location and years of experience, to provide a holistic view of all factors that might influence pay decisions. Pay Finder then generates a tailored “equitable pay” range, offering a comparison to market ranges and insights into how different choices in starting pay will impact an organization’s internal pay equity status.
Key features of Pay Finder include:
- Interactive Interface: Once users select a job and enter characteristics about a candidate, Pay Finder generates an internal equity compensation range and puts it side-by-side with a market range to guide salary negotiations.
- Salary Trends: Pay Finder pulls in salaries for existing employees doing similar work, including recent hires, providing timely insights on salary trends and drivers of pay for individual roles.
- Predictive Insights: Users can enter different salaries, and Pay Finder predicts the impact each will have on pay equity. This lets them make data-driven choices that build or maintain equal pay for employees doing equal work.
Frank Stoos, director of executive compensation for TE Connectivity, a global tech company with 80,000 employees added, “Our priority is to be proactive to prevent pay inequities from occurring in the first place. Relying on market rates and human discretion to set starting pay is not enough, you need to have an understanding of what’s internally equitable. Syndio’s Pay Finder enhances our ability to see what’s competitive and fair from day one. It helps us to do the right thing for our employees, and it reduces or eliminates the need for remediation actions by maintaining fair and equitable pay.”
More than 150 companies, including Adobe, General Mills, Nordstrom, Salesforce, and StitchFix, use Syndio to analyze and resolve pay disparities based on gender, race, or ethnicity across 2.4 million employees. For more information about Syndio’s Pay Finder, visit here.
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¹The survey was conducted from May 13-14, 2021, on Survey Monkey, of 1,847 respondents aged 21-60.
²https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/865000-women-dropped-out-of-the-labor-force-in-september-2020.html
