Heather Bussing - Unpacking Pay Equity and What It Really Means for Employers

[00:00:02] Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross-industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into

[00:00:20] a beaker. Mix thoroughly and voila! You get the HR Data Labs podcast where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate, and even irreverent, but count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data

[00:00:39] can be used to solve real-world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky. David Turetsky Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I am your host, David Turetsky, and we have with us a very special guest today. And

[00:00:52] we're going to be talking about a very, very special topic that's very near and dear to the hearts of the HR Data Labs fan base. Today we're talking to Heather Bussing. Heather, how are you? Heather Bussing I am good. I'm really good.

[00:01:06] David Turetsky So a lot of people know you on LinkedIn, but there are some people who may not. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Heather Bussing Yes. I am a California employment lawyer.

[00:01:15] I have been doing employment law for over 30 years, which means that I've learned a lot. And I have also been involved in the HR tech world for almost 20. And so I have this amazing privilege to be at that intersection of people and work and technology, and we'll get

[00:01:44] to this, but I'm very excited about pay equity technology and how it's going to make a difference for us. David Turetsky And now, now you can add to your list of accomplishments. You're a published author as well. Heather Bussing I know. I am so excited.

[00:02:01] David Turetsky So why don't you tell us a little bit about the book? Heather Bussing Yeah. Well, I and a whole bunch of smart people and friends have written a book called Get Pay Right. It should sound familiar to anybody at Sorry.com. David Turetsky Right.

[00:02:19] Heather Bussing My co-author is the CEO and he had something to do with the title. David Turetsky Yes, Mr. Kent Plunkett, our friend. Heather Bussing Mr. Kent Plunkett, yes. Heather Bussing But there are also other amazing contributors like Sarah Morgan and John Sumpser

[00:02:38] and Steve Bose and Trish Steed and Madeline Lourano and George Leroc. David Turetsky So it's really an all star cast. Heather Bussing Truly an all star cast, but the book, I'm actually going to get a box of the physical books in the mail tomorrow. David Turetsky Oh wow.

[00:03:01] Heather Bussing And I'm beside myself about real book day because I'm a writer and I love writing. And I always thought it would be cool to write a book and I've certainly edited a bunch. And I've certainly written volumes over the course of my career,

[00:03:20] but they have never been gathered together into a book. And so tomorrow that's happening. David Turetsky And so that feeling of accomplishment when you put your hands on that cover and when you open it up and it's got your name on it, there is nothing like it.

[00:03:37] It's almost a proud moment like seeing your kid graduate or you know, it's almost like a catharsis where you've got all this thing in your mind and you want to get it into some form that you

[00:03:52] think somebody might be able to consume and then you get the book and it's there. It's ready. Heather Bussing Well and it's, you know, you do a lot of work online too. It just sort of goes

[00:04:03] into a black hole and you don't really hear from people that often about what they experienced or what they learned or whether they liked it or whether they didn't. And so it's having an analog

[00:04:20] thing to touch and to give people. And it's an opportunity for people to speak back. David Turetsky Yeah. Heather Bussing Yeah. David Turetsky That's awesome. Heather Bussing So I'm super excited. I'm headed to Shurm in Chicago where there will be many,

[00:04:44] many copies of the books and a bunch of them will be at thecelery.com booth. So I bet if you showed up and asked for one, they might just have it for you. David Turetsky Yeah. And you may actually sign it for them as well.

[00:04:59] Heather Bussing I would be delighted to. David Turetsky That's great. So one fun thing that no one knows about Heather Bussing is? Heather Bussing That I am autistic. David Turetsky Hmm. I just learned it a few years ago when my son graduated from college and was really struggling

[00:05:22] in having a hard time. And he got an ADHD diagnosis. And as I started doing the research to understand what he was going through and how I could support him and, you know, help, I kept having these, huh, that sounds kind of familiar. David Turetsky Yeah.

[00:05:42] Heather Bussing And you know it's genetics. David Turetsky Well that's funny you say that I have two kids that are on the spectrum and one that's ADHD. So yeah. Yeah. Heather Bussing Yeah. But it's just been life changing for me because A,

[00:06:01] I understand why I'm weird. And B, there's nothing to do about it except just be myself. And it's a really good weird. David Turetsky Yeah. Oh no you're a great weird. I've spent a lot of time talking.

[00:06:15] You're a wonderful weird and I think that people have this misconception that it's a death sentence to be diagnosed with being on the spectrum. And it's absolutely not true. As you have demonstrated, you can be an extremely successful, brilliant person

[00:06:35] and it doesn't really change much does it? Except for self-awareness. Heather Bussing Yeah. Yeah. It just, it makes it easier to be in your own skin because you can stop comparing yourself to people who are different and thinking that there's

[00:06:51] something wrong with you. It's like no, no I'm just wired this way. David Turetsky Exactly. Heather Bussing I'm wired this way and there are things that I can do and there are things that are harder for me to do. Like large groups of people frightening confuse me.

[00:07:05] And so, you know, I have developed coping mechanisms and now I can take even better care of myself. So, you know. David Turetsky Absolutely. Heather Bussing I show up at an expo hall and I kind of want to faint because of all of the visual and auditory stimulation.

[00:07:22] David Turetsky Well, you're going to need to have those coping mechanisms for sure. Heather Bussing Yeah. Well, you know, you just, you sort of put on the, on the armor and set the phasers for stun and go and focus on a particular person or what you're doing

[00:07:40] and then make sure that you get some, find some places to hide and rest. David Turetsky Exactly. Heather Bussing And then I'm good as new again. David Turetsky Small doses of the bright lights and then recovery time and then small doses again.

[00:07:56] Heather Bussing Yeah, exactly. Because I love people. I love them. David Turetsky Right. Heather Bussing I just can't handle a lot of them all at once. David Turetsky And to be honest, knowing that and having those mechanisms to be

[00:08:07] able to support yourself is exactly what you need. And so, I applaud you for it. Heather Bussing Yes. And it turns out that it's true really for everyone no matter how you're wired. You know, just the self-acceptance and this is what I need to function in the ways

[00:08:26] that are comfortable for me to function. Everybody has their own quirks. David Turetsky Exactly. I was just going to say there's really no concept of the word normal. Heather Bussing No. David Turetsky Everybody's got something. So, yeah.

[00:08:39] But today we're going to talk about a really interesting topic. We've talked a lot about pay equity in the past. But now we're going to talk to someone in the world of pay equity

[00:08:49] who actually understands what it really means not just in one of the most complex states in the nation, but also what does pay equity really mean around the US and potentially

[00:08:59] around the world? So our first question, in the book you talk a lot about how pay equity is an important part of DEI and B. Why? Why is that true? Heather Bussing Nothing gets leadership attention like money. David Turetsky Yes. David Turetsky Cost.

[00:09:23] Heather Bussing Cost, but a budget is a statement of values and where the resources go and to whom tells you a lot about the values of the company and who they value. David Turetsky Right. Heather Bussing But a lot of that happens without ever really paying attention

[00:09:44] because it's how things have been done or because we have ideas about who is the breadwinner. And the thing about pay equity is that it's very easy to see now and it's very easy to do

[00:10:02] the analysis because we have these great tech programs that can assess the data, can run the statistical analysis, the multivariate regression analysis. And it sounds very complicated and it is if you're trying to do it on an Excel spreadsheet.

[00:10:26] But in reality it's not that hard. You look at who's making what and what they do and then you look through in the demographic information and you end up with a scatter plot that shows whether there's a correlation between gender or race or any other protected factors

[00:10:50] possible and pay. And so you get a really interesting view into who and what your organization values and how it all works. David Turetsky Right but a lot of those decisions that have been made in the past

[00:11:09] have been made on the wrong basis like you were bringing up before the cultural concepts of the breadwinner, the cultural concepts of valuing people have had material issues with and we see this all too often especially with gender as the main one but even with

[00:11:30] people of color we see this happen way too often. So how do we evaluate or how do we reevaluate resetting that culture so that we're making the right value judgments at the time we're making the most important decision, the hiring decision?

[00:11:47] Kirsten Larkin Right, right. Well there are a lot of factors that go into pay equity and only pay equity issues are only partly to do with discrimination. They also have to do with the market and you get into situations with wage compression so that new people are making

[00:12:11] more than people who have more tenure and experience and pay equity really is for everyone and it will protect white men who are suffering because of wage compression. David Turetsky Suffering.

[00:12:30] Kirsten Larkin But it allows you to see that, it allows you to see what's going on. Go ahead. David Turetsky I was going to say the technology was really good at being able to find

[00:12:41] problems but the problem that I found and we've talked a lot about on this program is that the data that underlies all of that technology needs to be in a pristine state so you can actually make those assertions otherwise what you're doing is you're gathering inappropriate conclusions

[00:13:01] around data that's really not facilitating the right kind of conclusion. Kirsten Larkin That's absolutely true. You need reliable pay data but you also need reliable data about what the work is because what it really is about is comparing work.

[00:13:22] Pay is just sort of the last piece in the analysis so having job descriptions that are accurate and useful so that you can compare what people do because what most people do

[00:13:39] is they already have the job, the org chart with the hierarchy and so they look at the levels and they make pay ranges based on your level and so then when they go back to do a pay equity analysis

[00:13:55] they're comparing pay with pay. It's a self-licking ice cream cone. David Turetsky Well and to bring it back to the DEIMB the job descriptions themselves had been built, the language used in the job descriptions especially

[00:14:12] for the hiring process, had language in it that kind of excluded some parties and getting them modern, getting them more accurate, getting them up to speed as well as getting them to a place

[00:14:24] where they're really reflective as you said of the work being done so you can compare cohorts of the right type level and appropriateness of job. That's a lot of work too.

[00:14:35] It is a lot of work. It is a lot of work and that's another place where technology has, is possible to really help and I think that that's one of the goals of this skills discussion.

[00:14:50] How about if we take, how about if we really focus on the work and we strip away some of the proxies for skills like where you graduated from college or what your degree was 30 years ago

[00:15:06] or our resumes don't reflect what we can do and that's another place where tradition has obscured the useful information. It's a crazy cultural artifact. It's almost like an application form is has this power over people. It has power over all people across the entire world. We can't

[00:15:34] break out of the chasm of name, social security number or employee ID number, whatever it is. You can't get away from these paradigms that exist that are absolute horse crap. Give us your last five jobs. Tell us about your, okay, you can get this shit on LinkedIn, right?

[00:15:55] It's all verified too. You can get it on LinkedIn. No, we want you to write it down on a piece of paper. Right and then we want you to upload your resume. Exactly. Yeah, and we all know

[00:16:09] how that goes too. So it's a very strange thing that we're kind of tied to the past and I really love what you're talking about, which is break away from telling me about what you did before,

[00:16:18] because no one knows how to write accurate resumes that are actually useful. So you're saying, tell me about the skills that you've acquired and that you use every day, right? Right. What work are you doing? What problems are you trying to solve? What do you bring

[00:16:36] to that? And how can we describe that in ways that are useful? And a lot of the ways that we've described them are not useful anymore. And so it's amazing that we're looking at all of this data, but we're

[00:16:57] just beginning to understand what it's good for and what it's not, because it's never the full story. It's like, your name is David. Okay, it's a shorthand for a whole human being who's done all sorts of interesting things and has all sorts of interesting things about them.

[00:17:26] Right. And so what you're saying is there's richness missing in the story because we don't get beyond the fascia. We don't go that level deep. Right. But we still use money as a shorthand for lots of things, status, power, access to resources,

[00:17:48] freedom, time, choices. And these are things that everybody should have access to and understand why they make what they make and what they need to do if they want to make more and how it works.

[00:18:09] It should be visible to everyone. Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by salarie.com. Now, back to the show. So let's pivot a little bit and get to question two, which now talks about

[00:18:27] some of the ways that this is being regulated and how it's changing because of that regulation. So question two is, we're seeing a lot of new pay transparency laws at the state level. What's changed to bring pay equity attention in the legislative houses across the U.S.?

[00:18:45] Why is it there now? We haven't made any progress in 30 years. Pay equity laws have been on the books since 1960s. The first one came about as part of the women's rights movement and Title VII,

[00:19:02] and the data is that it's not changing. And so legislators are trying to figure out what to do about that. And it's something that's actually much easier to regulate than discrimination. Right. Because people are complicated and when you're trying to figure out if someone's discriminating,

[00:19:26] it's always complex and there are always mixed motives. And it's like what really happened and deciding things on case-by-case basis is extremely expensive and time consuming. So with pay equity for one of the first times, we can actually look at this.

[00:19:48] And so during the Obama administration, they added pay reporting to the EEO1 form, which requires employers to list, roll and demographics. He wanted to get his word in. Yes, exactly. So I think there's a package about to be delivered.

[00:20:13] The Obama administration looked at the EEO1 form and said, let's add pay into that. And that way we can see where there may be pay equity issues. And the Trump administration said,

[00:20:30] no, we're not going to do that before it went into force. So the states, well, Congress also has been gridlocked and you can't get federal law through about just about anything and haven't been for a long time. So the states are starting to pick up the thing,

[00:20:54] but it's such an interesting thing. The first thing they did was require secrecy in the salary history band. So employers could no longer ask people what they made before. And the idea there is that it prevents bringing discrimination forward.

[00:21:14] But I think that was the lesson that Ledbetter taught us, didn't it? Yep. The Lilly Ledbetter. And for those of you who don't know, that was the Lilly Ledbetter case where the, I guess it was called the first initial pay act that was discriminatory went back several

[00:21:31] decades, right? Right. So that was the last time the federal government tried to mess with it. And so we started out with salary history bands and those have spread to many states. And then states started looking at requiring more pay transparency so that people can understand

[00:21:57] what the role they're applying for makes, whether they're a new candidate or whether they're an internal candidate applying for a promotion. Right. And then they started requiring pay transparency in job ads. And so we're seeing variations on that and there's a lot of

[00:22:22] debate about whether it's useful or not. Because you can't require an employer to say exactly what somebody's going to make in a role when they don't know who the person is or exactly what their qualifications are. So we're seeing requirements for a pay range,

[00:22:42] but many employers are still really uncomfortable disclosing what they pay publicly. And so we're seeing very broad pay ranges and there'll be some litigation about that. Yeah, but Heather, I think one of the reasons why this has been a problem is that, you know,

[00:23:00] I've been a practitioner for, I was a practitioner for many years as a Wells consultant. And we always had this thought process that we don't trust that employees would do the right

[00:23:10] thing with having that data that they'd say, why don't you put me at the max? And to me, it's smacked of absolute abject laziness not to explain it to them about why and where you are.

[00:23:22] And so really along with transparency needs to come the education to be able to use this information for being able to understand it. Because comp, I mean we use an art and a science

[00:23:36] to develop these ranges, but then you have to explain that to people. I spent today talking to a client about how all this works and why we do it. And as long as you get through that part of the explanation, those ranges are actually useful.

[00:23:50] And to me, the thing that it does is it prevents special deals being made because you're a white male, I think you're going to be great in this job. I'm going to give you more. Whereas someone

[00:24:03] who's a woman of color comes in, she gets a worse deal because she nor I actually know what the range of pay is, so they can make it up on the fly. To me, it eliminates that. So it gives us

[00:24:16] an ability to be on the same playing field. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, it really does take, you can still take into account things like where the job is or what the cost of living is for

[00:24:30] the person doing the job and what their experience and education and skills and all of the legitimate factors are still fair game. It doesn't, you know, and you're not even required to pay in that published

[00:24:48] pay range. That's right. But it has to be close to what you actually will pay. So tell me why is it that more states have not passed this legislation? Like Massachusetts right now, we've got one that has passed one of the houses, but it's still not gotten

[00:25:07] past the other house. I think that as a culture, we are really uncomfortable talking about money. I think it makes all of us uncomfortable because there is that sense of money being tied to worth. And if you don't make what you think you should, you're embarrassed or uncomfortable,

[00:25:33] or if you want to try to pay people less than they market actually requires and you're trying to get a deal, you know, they don't want the data out there publicly. But the reality is that the

[00:25:51] data has been out there since Glassdoor started and, you know, wanting technologies. I don't know if you remember them, that they were tracking all of the salaries and public employees have their exact pay published online all the time. So it's a cultural thing. It's not,

[00:26:18] there's not a practical barrier. It's all our feelings about money and worth. We could outlaw water coolers. That might actually help a lot. That seems to be the crux of where all the bad stuff happens. Get rid of the water coolers.

[00:26:41] Now the bad stuff happens in the employee fridge. No, no. Well, yeah, when they leave a sandwich for too long, but that's a different problem than we are selling. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, man, I wish I could

[00:26:57] talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast

[00:27:09] or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com forward slash H R D L consulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. So let's go to question three because this is an interesting one

[00:27:22] and I'm fascinated to hear your opinion on this. What can employers do to help improve pay equity and how do they actually convince the leaders that it really matters? Well, it's a compliance issue and you never ever want to waste a compliance issue.

[00:27:41] Right. So there's risk and you can get legal behind it really quickly and that always helps. And then the data is out there and it's easy to get and these cases are very easy to prove.

[00:27:58] I mean, really, they're math and statistics and you can argue after the fact about whether it's just a difference in this particular person and their qualifications or whether it's discrimination. But you don't want to have to do that because it's really,

[00:28:20] really expensive. It is so much cheaper to throw money at your people instead of your lawyers. I mean, it really is an easy problem to address in that you can do it. It's difficult in that one,

[00:28:39] it involves money and to pay and pay equity is dynamic. So it requires monitoring and regular assessment. And I think it also goes back to something we were talking about before. The data needs to be accurate. We need to understand what the jobs are. We need to make

[00:28:58] sure that we understand what the cohorts are to do the appropriate comparisons. And for those of you don't know what the cohorts are, it's jobs that are similarly situated that are basically similar jobs that are just doing different things or they could be doing the same things,

[00:29:14] just different jobs. Right. But they have an equal value and equal impact on the company. Right. Skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions are the legal factors. Right. And then beyond that, you've got things like performance that could change someone's pay.

[00:29:32] You have, well, I guess performance is really one of the big ones, right? Performance experience as you're saying skills and other things that can explain differentiation. Right. But effort, skills, responsibility and working conditions, where does that show up on

[00:29:51] a resume? It does not. Not at all. Doesn't show up in a job description. Maybe the skills. Yeah, I mean there are some parts of that that do but the problem is and the working conditions

[00:30:02] certainly do. But the problem is that it's not really very uniform. Now to your point before, there are technologies that help you do that. I can think of one. Yes, me too. Sorry,

[00:30:15] but seriously, it goes back to the cultural problem that we have of we don't really know how to well document these things. Do we do them because they have always been done this way or hey,

[00:30:28] this is the form we've been using since 1915. We're going to stick with that. No, no. There's actually regulations now that you have to follow for that. But that's one of the problems, right? Is that just because it's been done that way

[00:30:40] doesn't really matter anymore, right? Right. And that's the excuses that we hear time after time. Let's talk a little bit about when if you're going to talk to the leaders and you've made the case

[00:30:53] of listen, it's better not to pay them appropriately than to go to court and all that other stuff. What would be some other things that you'd want to highlight to them about some of this legislation that exists around the country like California has got different regulations

[00:31:09] in Illinois than Colorado, than other places. What would your advice be about how to follow all these different regs for especially for companies who operate in all these different states? What would your advice be? And by the way, you're not giving legal advice that

[00:31:25] they have to follow. They have talked to the general counsel. No, no, no. But I'm a California lawyer. So my advice at California is the most employee friendly is always going to have the most restrictive requirements. And so comply with California law

[00:31:42] and you'll be in compliance everywhere else. And even if there's some technicality, it won't matter because nobody's going to fight about it. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about lowest common denominator with companies where you know, if you're operating in California, you just do what California needs, right?

[00:32:03] If you have people in Colorado and Illinois in California, look at those legislation wordings carefully and make sure you're operating under the, I'll do everything that each one needs. So I don't have to figure out which one I'm doing today.

[00:32:18] Right, exactly. Or come up with one way that meets the requirements of everything. Exactly. Of everywhere. But it just depends on what you're doing and what makes sense in your situation. But it's, yeah, it's not that hard. And the states don't usually come up

[00:32:42] with new and original ideas. Somebody starts the next one picks it up and improves it a little. But they're not, you know, is this in or is this out is kind of the big question.

[00:32:56] I was very shocked by Colorado putting in place the requirement to have career frameworks. That I thought it was wonderful. I think that every company should have career frameworks to tell people where they should be going in their career and how to actually stick with one company

[00:33:12] for a while. I was proud of them for that. And I was actually shocked that they did that before California did. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's such a good idea. It is. It's such a good idea. But it's expensive.

[00:33:27] It is, it is. But once you make the shift, it's not that hard to maintain. Right. You know, and technology can help with all of that too. Again, we both know a technology that can actually help with that. Yes. Yes.

[00:33:53] But Heather, I want to thank you very much. This has been really eye-opening. It's been wonderful having you on. I've been dying to have you on since we started. And it's really wonderful to have you here. I can't wait to get my copy of the book.

[00:34:05] I'm looking forward to it. And hopefully next time I see you, you'll sign it for me. I got to get Kent signature on it too. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Happy to do it. Happy to do it. I would be honored.

[00:34:18] Great. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Talk to you soon. All right. Thank you all for listening. Take care. That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe.

[00:34:32] And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.