Female Employee Empowerment - Michael Osland Explains What Businesses Can Do

Everybody is familiar with the disparity in wages and other discriminatory practices women generally face in their workplaces. As an ethical and responsible business owner, you will not want your women employees to face any disadvantage or exploitation because of their gender or race. When you invest in the equality and growth of your employees, regardless of their gender, both they and you benefit. In addition to the advantages accruing to female employees, you build trust and assume a position of leadership that can help build your reputation and attract the best talent. A few things you can do to bridge the gender gap of your female employees:

Focus On Equalizing Your Payroll

If you want to support your female employees and ensure they earn the same as their male counterparts, you need to find out what is wrong with your current payroll system. You can do this by performing an audit. It will help you understand if women do not earn the same as male workers for specified roles. You should also see if the basis of awarding raises is fair and you are allowing every employee to earn a fair wage. While you can do this survey yourself, you can take it further by going in for an audit by an independent agency. It will ensure that the study is objective and also relieve you from needing to divert precious internal resources, observes Michael Osland. According to Forbes, being open about remuneration is key to the quest for equality.

Implement Transparency about Salaries

Most employers do not encourage discussions on salaries as they fear they will lose control over the payroll. However, with the changing work environment, both employers and employees are now more open to discussing wage issues. If you adopt a transparent policy regarding your hiring practice and the salaries you give employees, you will automatically let people know that they are being treated equitably and fairly. You can eliminate any skewed business practices that discriminate against women employees. Another potential benefit of being open to discussing salaries is that it improves both employee motivation and work performance.

Improve the Representation of Women in Leadership Roles, Advises Michael Osland

Even though nobody will dispute that women have very good leadership skills, they account for less than five percent of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. The picture is very much the same elsewhere, with fewer women making it to the higher levels of management. While you can increase the representation of women in leadership roles by hiring fresh talent, it is invariably far better to identify capable and driven women employees. You will not only demonstrate that you are transparent to gender issues but also you are committed to promoting talent and diversity to make your business more welcoming and equitable for existing and potential employees.

Conclusion

Dismantling salary disparities, bringing in a culture of transparency, and elevating more competent women to positions of leadership are effective methods of ushering in fairness and equity among employees. You can support it by encouraging all employees to use resources for professional development that will benefit both them and the company.