Schneider Electric's Pay Equity Framework ensures the company's commitment to rewarding employees fairly for the skills they possess, and their work performance regardless of gender.
Schneider Electric Vice President, Lipika Verma, shares her experience of the company's approach to equal pay and workplace inclusion.
An innovative Schneider Electric leader
Lipika is the Vice President of Rewards & Performance Innovation & Thought Leadership at Schneider Electric.
She is responsible for the overall rewards strategy for Schneider Electric globally and leads the Centre of Expertise for Total Rewards & Performance function.
During her career, she has received multiple awards at national and international level in areas of Total Rewards and Wellbeing. She was conferred with the Global Compensation & Benefits Leader Award in 2017 and the Transforming Leadership certificate from INSEAD in Paris.
Maintaining workplace inequality
Lipika was born in India, the youngest of three children, and was fortunate to have always been treated equally to her siblings. So, she never knew that gender bias existed until she completed her master’s degree and entered the professional world.
Early in her career, Lipika worked for a company where she felt that there was a difference when it came to gender. "A female colleague coming back from maternity leave was given a lower performance rating and a minimal compensation increase, which I found to be absurd. This case really posed questions in my mind of why there was this differentiation?" explains Lipika.
"At the same company, women and men were evaluated differently when hiring for the same role. In one instance, the woman applying had taken a break of two years after having a child. She was offered compensation much lower than a counterpart who was doing the same role. After this experience, I began to question many things as I felt that it would happen to me eventually and I would not like to be treated in an unfair manner. I tried influencing leadership but alas! I was not successful, and I decided to part ways," says Lipika.
Proud to work at Schneider Electric
Since then, Lipika has worked at companies that were far more balanced in terms of gender equality and fairness of pay, and Lipika is proud to now be working at Schneider Electric.
Whilst Lipika took up the role based on the job itself, the great people, and the meaningful work at Schneider Electric, one aspect which is close to her heart is the fact that Schneider Electric cares about fair pay for all. "As the Global Rewards and Benefits leader, this is something that was very important to me," says Lipika.
Promoting equal pay for equal work
Equal pay for equal work is a core component of Schneider Electric's reward philosophy, guided by the principles of fairness, consistency, and greater transparency. The company applies a multi-pronged, holistic approach to creating a sustainable culture of fair pay. This means Schneider Electric uses its globally applied fair pay framework to ensure fair pay during hiring, promotions, during pay review, and more for approximately 130,000 employees in over 100 countries.
"In my experience as an employee, I find Schneider to be extremely fair when it comes to equality and gender, and I have never felt any kind of a bias being a female. I have seen that equal opportunities have been given to me when it came to a role change. This is truly heartening to observe and experience," comments Lipika.
Narrowing the gender pay gap
Schneider Electric has reinforced its commitment to pay equity, committing to obtain and maintain a pay gap below 1% by 2025 for both females and males.
"To support this commitment, and improve transparency and inclusion, we’ve adopted an updated methodology. In simplest terms, the new methodology allows us to take our pay equity journey past focusing solely on gender, but expanding to all facets of our diverse, unique workforce," explains Lipika.
"Additionally, we’ve built focus around eliminating pay gaps before they occur, by educating and training leaders, managers, and HR teams on unconscious bias, pay equity and fairness. For oversight and consistency, we established governance at the country level for HR and leaders to review progress."
Commitment to global inclusion
Schneider Electric takes proactive actions to monitor equal pay. All the while the company continues to further its commitments to fair pay. "We’ve made progress towards our ambition, but there’s still much work to be done," suggests Lipika.
"By taking a multi-pronged approach, spanning compensation policies, education, and awareness. All these efforts support our ambition to become the most inclusive and caring company in the world, by continuing to move the needle in the right direction. And we can be proud of that. I am especially."
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Disclosure: Where Women Work researches and publishes insightful evidence about how its paid member organizations support women's equality.