The conversation continues with gender pay gap discussions regularly highlighted in the media. We know women are under-represented in the engineering profession and there is an ongoing focus on creating opportunities for women to advance in the engineering world, which is positive.
At ENGEO we’re really proud to have diversity in our leadership team with our current executive group being 50% female without ever mandating this. We’ve also developed a robust and transparent pay setting process that we trust treats everybody fairly, regardless of gender or other differences.
Let’s look at some of the ways we achieve equality at ENGEO.
Unlike many organisations we decide on employee remuneration as a group. Each year we get our executive team, which is made up of Group, Office, HR and Senior Leaders together and discuss each individual employee. Over several hours we hold in-depth conversations about each person’s contributions. In addition, we have market information to relate our decisions to current market trends.
When it comes to end-of-year bonuses (which is one of my favourite times of the year), the same group comes together. We work on the basis that salaries are for doing your job and bonuses are for going above and beyond. Those who have made the greatest contribution are given the greatest bonuses. It’s not a given that our more senior team will earn bigger bonuses, in fact we have many examples of junior staff being rewarded more generously than their more senior counterparts.
I’ve worked in organisations where new employees are paid significantly more than existing employees and that leads to an erosion of trust within the company. At ENGEO when we hire new staff, their pay is in line with others at a similar level.
The most important thing to us at ENGEO is to make sure equal contribution is rewarded fairly and those going the extra mile are remunerated to reflect that.
At the end of the day it’s quite simple really, we treat people as people and pay them and promote them based on their skills, contribution and individual merit. We encourage more organisations to be open and collaborative with their remuneration process and make sure they are rewarding individuals on their merits and nothing else.
By: Greg Martin, CMEngNZ
Principal Geologist
