Schneider Electric is making a concerted effort to advance toward pay parity and create more opportunities for women to serve in leadership roles.
They've a goal to reach pay parity for 150,000 by 2017 and for all employees by 2020.
Aiming to achieve pay parity
Leaders are challenging their teams to focus on hiring and promoting more females in the organisation. As a company, Schneider Electric seeks to closely mirror their customers and geographies in which 50% of the population is female. In their efforts to achieve pay parity, Schneider Electric deliberately looks at the pay numbers and applying scrutiny to them. Part of this includes comparing salaries of men and women in equal positions and addressing validated pay gaps.
Pathways to leadership
And Schneider Electric goes beyond the numbers. They're developing a culture that creates and supports a path to leadership positions for talented female employees. This includes involvement from their top female leaders, who are already performing at a high level in challenging roles. Time is an issue, of course, but leaders find ways to free up some of their time to mentor the next generation of leaders coming up through the organisation. In Schneider Electric's hiring practices, they're challenging themselves to spend more time and effort looking for qualified female candidates.
Gender parity is a journey
As Schneider Electric moves along this journey, they keep two things firmly in mind: First, they expect the same effort and performance from all employees - male or female. Secondly, there is always room for those honest conversations about what gender equality in the workplace looks like and there's recognition that the journey may at times place pressure on the executive team.
Actively closing the gender pay gap
Equal pay is the right thing to do for today’s and future generations of women. What is the company you work for doing to actively help close the pay gap?
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Disclosure: Where Women Work researches and publishes insightful evidence about how its paid member organizations support women's equality.