Schneider Electric has a multi-pronged approach to creating a sustainable culture of fair pay.
This means the company takes take fair pay into consideration not only during hiring but also when promoting, during pay review, and more.
Schneider Electric also takes action for equal opportunities, addresses unfair pay gaps and moves towards pay equity. The company's Pay Equity framework is its commitment to rewarding employees fairly for the skills they possess and performance.
Karine Armand-Fedida, SVP of Total Rewards & Performance at Schneider Electric, shares more.
Personal experiences of pay inequity
Karine admits that, although pay equity "seems like a no-brainer", as a woman professional in a male-dominated industry, she has experienced pay equity issues at various times in her career. "And many of you probably have too, in some form or another," she adds.
She recalls discussions at one of her previous employers about bonus payments. "Some of the senior management felt that women who had been away on maternity leave should not be entitled to a bonus as they hadn’t contributed as much as their male counterparts. An attitude that perhaps wasn’t that unusual back then…but it shocked me to the core because, in my mind, it should not have been a question in the first place," she explains.
Using a multi-pronged approach to move towards fair pay
Thankfully, many organizations have woken up to the need to address unfair pay gaps and move towards pay equity - and Karine says she is extremely proud of the progress Schneider Electric has made on this issue.
Schneider Electric has taken a multi-pronged, holistic approach to creating a sustainable culture of fair pay and adopted a global framework, covering nearly 130,000 employees across more than 100 countries and territories, to ensure consistency, fairness, and greater transparency.
In concrete terms, this means Schneider Electric:
- joined the UN Women HeForShe IMPACT 10x10x10 in 2015 to be a champion of promoting gender equality
- is committed to implementing a global pay equity review process that covers 95% of its employee population by 2020. In fact, Schneider Electric managed to exceed this goal, reaching 99.6% in 2020
- hires at competitive and fair levels based on role and experience, regardless of gender
- is raising awareness of the issue and combat hidden bias in the minds of managers and colleagues by hosting workshops, learning sessions and providing them with playbooks
"The journey towards gender pay equity and fair pay has not been easy. And there’s still a long way to go as we have the ambition to increase gender diversity from hiring to executive leadership," Karine adds.
"But taking a multi-pronged approach, spanning both compensation policies and education and awareness-raising – and applying it consistently to staff around the globe — has helped to move the needle in the right direction. And we can be proud of that."
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Disclosure: Where Women Work researches and publishes insightful evidence about how its paid member organizations support women's equality.