We’ve all heard the buzzwords: diversity, equity, inclusion. But how many organizations walk the walk when it comes to equity in managing their organization? It’s time to move beyond theoretical discussions and translate those well-intentioned conversations into concrete actions.
Our “Equity in Action” series explored the building blocks of a truly equitable workplace, from establishing the equivalent worth of jobs and developing a grading structure to utilizing salary surveys and implementing a salary scale and fair pay management mechanisms. In this final installment, we’ll share how your organization can embed equity into every facet of its HR program, whether it’s recruiting new talent or planning for your successors.
The key is a unified and objective approach to assessing employee skills and capabilities throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Think of standardized processes, clear metrics, and tools that evaluate employees based on their work. This blog post will share how you can integrate equity into your HR functions, ensuring fairness in every stage of a staff member’s journey.
The challenge of subjectivity and flexibility
For far too long, HR processes have been marred by subjective assessments. This approach not only hampers the quest for equality but also exacerbates inequality when each HR function is handled on a case-by-case basis.
Are performance evaluations based on objective criteria, or are some staff members given more leeway than others? Is career advancement based solely on merit and potential, or do personal relationships and “gut feelings” come into play? Are all employees given equal access to training and development programs, or are specific individuals favored?
These subjective and flexible approaches can create an uneven playing field, where some staff members are inadvertently given an advantage while others are held back.
To counteract this, organizations need to shift toward a standardized, objective, and consistent approach to evaluating skills and competencies. This involves:
- Establishing clear criteria and metrics. Define what success looks like for each grade level and use these objective measures to assess their contributions and performance.
- Implementing standardized evaluation processes. Use the same tools and framework for all staff members in similar roles to ensure consistency and fairness.
- Providing regular and transparent feedback. Give staff members clear, actionable feedback based on objective data to help them understand their strengths and areas for development.
By removing subjectivity and flexibility and, more importantly, embracing a more standardized approach, organizations can create a more equitable workplace where all employees are judged on their skills and work output and have a fair chance of succeeding.
Birches Group’s five-step approach to achieving equity
In our first post in this “Equity in Action” series, we introduced Birches Group’s five-step approach to achieving equity in compensation management. We highlighted the urgent need for organizations to move beyond discussions and take concrete action to address inequities in their compensation structures.
Building on this framework, we examine how this integrated approach can be applied across all HR functions, creating an equitable workplace where every process— from recruitment to succession planning—is grounded in the principle of establishing the equivalent worth of each job within your organization. By minimizing the influence of personal biases at every HR function, we can ensure a level playing field for all staff.
This integrated approach, as we discussed in the first post, offers a multitude of benefits that can transform your organization:
- It reduces bias and increases fairness by relying on objective criteria, thus minimizing the impact of unconscious bias and ensuring all employees are treated equitably.
- This approach also enhances transparency and trust. Clear, consistent processes foster transparency and build trust between employees and the organization.
- Furthermore, standardized processes streamline HR operations and free up resources for strategic initiatives, improving efficiency and effectiveness.
- Finally, objective data offers valuable insights into workforce trends and enables informed, data-driven decision-making.
However, we understand that bridging the gap between the theoretical ideals of equity and real-world implementation can be challenging. Organizations often encounter obstacles like bias creeping into decision-making despite best intentions, vague criteria making it difficult to assess staff members objectively and consistently, and inconsistent processes leading to unfair treatment.
To overcome these challenges, we encourage you to conduct an equity assessment and evaluate your current HR policies and practices critically. Ask yourself these questions:
- Does the candidate’s skill level determine your starting salaries, or are they influenced by factors like negotiation skills or salary history?
- Are your performance reviews based on clear, measurable metrics based on the expectations of the job, or are they prone to subjectivity and bias?
- Are your promotion criteria transparent and consistently applied, or are they open to interpretation?
- Does your compensation structure reflect the value of each grade level, or are there unexplained pay gaps?
These are areas where most of the inequities and inconsistencies begin.
An integrated framework and tool, like Birches Group’s CommunityTM platform, can be especially invaluable.
It provides standardized processes to ensure consistency and fairness across all HR functions. Additionally, CommunityTM presents clear metrics to deliver objective measures of skills, competencies, and performance.
By reducing reliance on subjective judgment, your organization can minimize the impact of bias and promote data-driven decision-making. This creates a truly equitable workplace where all employees are empowered to reach their full potential.
Applying the approach across HR
Let’s explore how our integrated approach to achieving equity can be applied across various HR functions:
Recruitment
Imagine a recruitment process where every decision is rooted in the defined skills profile of the job. This means targeting your recruitment efforts to attract candidates with the specific skills and competencies needed for the role, ensuring a diverse pool of qualified applicants. It also means using standardized assessments to evaluate each candidate’s skills and abilities, eliminating bias and ensuring that hiring decisions are based solely on knowledge and experience.
Finally, it involves determining starting salaries based on demonstrated skill level within the respective pay range of the job, eliminating the need for salary negotiations and ensuring pay equity from day one.
Pay movement
With an integrated approach, pay increases become a transparent and objective process. Salary adjustments are tied to clearly defined skills growth and contributions, ensuring all staff members are rewarded fairly for their development. Clear criteria are established for salary adjustments, such as acquiring new skills, taking on increased responsibilities leading to bigger contributions, reducing the potential for pay gaps, and ensuring that pay decisions are data-driven.
Learning & development
Our approach transforms learning & development from a generic offering to a targeted investment in employee growth. It starts with using objective skills assessments to identify individual skill gaps and development needs, enabling personalized learning journeys.
Then, staff members work on their personal learning & development assignments specifically tailored to address those identified needs either deeper into the role or work toward the next higher grade level, maximizing employee growth and engagement. This fosters a culture of continuous learning & development, where staff are encouraged to acquire new skills and advance their careers.
Furthermore, our approach promotes shared responsibility between managers and employees for development, with managers actively supporting their team members’ growth by providing/identifying opportunities and staff taking ownership of their learning journey.
Succession planning
Organizations can build a strong leadership pipeline by applying an objective lens to succession planning. Standardized criteria assess employees’ readiness for promotion, ensuring that advancement decisions are based on merit and potential, not favoritism.
Clear succession pathways and policies are established based on skills and competencies, providing staff members with a roadmap for career progression. This cultivates a talented pool of future leaders, ensuring the long-term sustainability of your organization.
How CommunityTM can support your equity journey
Putting these principles into practice may seem daunting, but Birches Group’s CommunityTM framework and tool can seamlessly guide your organization through the five-step approach from start to finish. This integrated platform provides the structure and resources you need to operationalize equity across all your HR processes.
CommunityTM offers a range of solutions designed to support your equity journey:
- Centralized skills data. CommunityTM presents a central hub for managing all your skills data, enabling you to create a comprehensive skills inventory for your workforce and track staff skills development over time. This centralized system ensures that everyone is assessed against the same objective criteria.
- Objective assessment tools. With built-in assessment tools that utilize the same consistent framework, CommunityTM helps you evaluate skills and competencies objectively, minimizing bias and ensuring fair treatment.
- Data-driven insights. CommunityTM generates powerful data-driven insights that inform your decision-making across all HR functions. Identify skill gaps, track pay equity progress, and analyze workforce trends to make informed decisions that promote fairness and transparency.
- Support for key HR functions. CommunityTM offers the tools and resources to embed equity into every stage of the employee lifecycle, from recruitment and pay movement to learning & development and succession planning.
By leveraging the power of CommunityTM, your organization can move beyond theoretical discussions of equity and take concrete action to build a fair workplace. With its integrated approach, objective assessment tools, and data-driven insights, Community™ empowers you to create an organization where every employee can thrive.
What about performance?
At this point, you might be wondering: “This all sounds great, but where does performance fit into this approach?”
While our focus has been on building a foundation of equity through skills and competencies, we understand that performance is still a critical factor in employee development and motivation. Assessing skills and rewarding performance are separate but related pieces of the puzzle in retaining and motivating your workforce.
Think of it this way: skills represent an individual’s growth in knowledge and experience, while performance reflects how effectively they use those skills to achieve results. Both are essential for a thriving organization.
CommunityTM addresses this with a robust performance management system that offers a simple but comprehensive view of staff performance. This platform allows you to provide 360° feedback from various internal and external stakeholders. In addition, CommunityTM enables your organization to acknowledge and reward staff for their contributions, celebrating both those who meet expectations and those who exceed them, fostering a culture of appreciation and broad staff motivation.
It’s important to emphasize that performance should be assessed solely for rewarding achievement. It should not be a factor in determining a staff member’s pay increase or promotion eligibility, as those decisions should be grounded in skills assessment.
By keeping this distinction, you can ensure that your performance management system serves its purpose: to motivate employees and reward their contributions.
Get in touch with Birches Group
Achieving true equity across your HR processes requires a commitment to objectivity, transparency, and a unified approach. It demands a shift from ad-hoc arrangements to standardized processes, from subjective judgments to data-driven decisions.
Birches Group is your trusted partner in navigating this journey. Our proven five-step approach and the CommunityTM platform provide the framework and tools you need to operationalize equity across your organization.
Ready to create a workplace where every employee has a fair chance to thrive? Contact Birches Group today. Our team of experts is prepared to offer the guidance and support you need to make equity a reality.
Carla is a part-time copywriter on our marketing team in Manila. Before shifting to freelance writing in 2020, she worked as a marketing and communications specialist at the offices of EY and Grant Thornton. She has written about HR and career development for Kalibrr.
Follow us on LinkedIn for more content on pay management and HR solutions.
