GET PAY RIGHT: How to Achieve Pay Equity That Works By Kent Plunkett and Heather Bussing

In today's dynamic work environment, where job titles often mask vast differences in responsibilities and pay scales, the imperative for pay equity has never been more pressing.

Get Pay Right: How to Achieve Pay Equity That Works (WALTHAM, Mass, SHRM; July 5,) by Salary.com CEO Kent Plunkett and employment attorney Heather Bussing, draws on over 25 years of experience at the forefront of the pay transparency movement and offers practical guidance on understanding and addressing pay equity issues within organizations.

The authors redefine pay equity as equal pay for comparable work that is internally equitable, externally competitive, and transparently communicated. It isn't just about being fair; it's about making sure businesses thrive in an era where being transparent is key. Embracing pay equity not only fosters an inclusive workplace culture but also boosts engagement, performance, and ROI, crucial for businesses eyeing global competitiveness. 

But transparency doesn't equate to disclosing everyone's salaries. Plunkett founded Salary.com on the idea that every employee should be able to find out what they’re worth and use that info to negotiate their pay. As the company continues to lead the industry with innovations in compensation software, Plunkett is now providing HR professionals and business managers with a toolkit to achieve pay equity in our lifetime. His steps to get started include: 

• Tackling pay transparency at every level: 77 percent of employees don't know how people are paid in their org; Employees who understand how they are paid (and why) are more engaged and work more effectively.
• Addressing unconscious biases in hiring: Only 42 percent of companies involve the chief diversity officer in talent acquisition decisions, despite over 90 percent stating that reducing bias is a top priority.
• Matching retention efforts to recruiting efforts: Pay raises are typically larger when people change jobs than when they stay for annual cost-of-living adjustments. While job changes involve factors beyond pay, being competitive with market rates is crucial for retaining employees, and more cost-effective.
• Improving performance management: 47 percent of HR leaders do not know what skill gaps their current employees have.

SHRM CHRO, Jim Link shared, "Tackling pay equity is no small undertaking for any organization.  By adopting the multi-pronged approach Plunkett describes, companies will significantly increase the likelihood of achieving pay equity while improving the overall employee experience along the way."

As the labor market combats the permanent decline of available workers and faces unprecedented challenges on the horizon, Get Pay Right serves as a timely roadmap for organizations to navigate the complexities of pay equity and build a culture of transparency and accountability. 

Get Pay Right is available for purchase on Amazon.

Salary.com has been solving the complex human capital needs of global organizations for more than 20 years. The company leads the industry in compensation data, software and services. Over 30,000 organizations in 22 countries use Salary.com’s solutions to confidently hire and retain talent so they can better compete in a constantly changing landscape. Salary.com provides more than 10 billion data points across more than 225 industries using our powerful, proprietary AI framework to get pay right. The company’s flagship product CompAnalyst^® empowers organizations with a suite of tools that simplifies hiring, eliminates compensation guesswork, and increases retention. Employee trust depends on fair pay and Salary.com’s solutions get pay right. Please visit www.salary.com/business. 

About the Authors:

Kent Plunkett, co-founder and CEO of Salary.com, built his company in 1999 with a goal of reinventing how employers and employees access compensation data. The company’s groundbreaking Salary Wizard was the first tool employees could access to understand their worth, effectively lifting the veil on salary information for millions of employees annually. On the B2B side, Salary.com has become the preeminent provider of compensation market data, software, and analytics, serving over 30,000 survey participant organizations, 8,000 business-to-business software subscribers, and 45+ million employees globally. Kent holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and A.B. in Economics and Government from Georgetown University. He is a three-time Inc. 500 CEO, a six-time Deloitte Fast 50 awardee and recipient of the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of Year Award for business services.  

Heather Bussing is a California employment attorney with over 30 years’ experience providing sensible and strategic advice to employers. Her deep experience with business, humans, technology, and work gives her a unique perspective focused on preventing and solving problems rather than fighting about them. Heather has been interviewed and quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Business Insider, and NPR. She writes a daily column on the latest in employment laws, covering pay equity and transparency, AI in HR Tech, and why compliance, diversity, and fairness are good business. 

“This is a funny, wise, and marvelously readable book about leadership and values. New to the topic? You’ll see plain language analogies. Expert in the subject matter? You’ll see deep historical analyses of the root causes of today’s issues. Lost in the legal thicket? You’ll find a clear path forward. It’s required reading at my firm for everyone involved with negotiating compensation. As the authors note, ‘The way we allocate resources says a lot about who and what we care about.’”—Bob Corlett, President and Founder of Staffing Advisors

“The authors do a great job of illustrating that pay is about a lot more than money. An organization’s values show most clearly in their decisions about which work gets highly compensated—and who gets the opportunity to do which kinds of work. This is a great practical guide for business leaders who want to build high-performing organizations with fairness at the center.”—Keiran Snyder, Founder and Former CEO of Textio