Google Found Its Male Employees were Being Paid Less

In its fight to eradicate the gender pay gap within its company, Google found that some of its male software developers were being paid less. Compared to women, they were found to have received fewer bonuses and hikes in 2018. Google quickly fixed the gap, spending over $9.7 million (RM39.30 million) on over 10,000 workers in the process.

In an analysis of pay across departments, it was found that at some point, more women software engineers received bonuses or pay increments from their senior managers in 2018.

The study was actually initiated to discover whether the female employees of the Company and those belonging to minority groups were being paid less. In the process, it was discovered that some male software developers had actually received a lot less compared to their female counterparts in terms of pay increments and bonuses last year, for doing the same job.

Google is one of many Silicon Valley companies being pressurised to address sexual harassment and pay gap, among other gender problems. Right now, the Company is being sued by many former women employees who said they were paid lesser than the men for doing the same work and with the same qualifications.

 

Paying fair

Google said that it has not been paying its women staff less and felt that pay packages among similar job titles or positions were not the most accurate method to measure equity.

Google's general practice is to use an algorithm involving performance, job, location and other factors to fix an employee's salary. Then they will take subjective factors into accounts, such as whether the concerned employee will perform better in the future; whether she is being paid similar to others who contribute the same amount of work, and so on. The decisions are based on the rationale offered by the managers.

Though the Company is resting easy after having addressed the gap, the fact remains the hike is not enough considering what some of its women staff would have earned had they been placed in the correct pay grade at the very start of their job.

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Source: Arstechnica

 

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