Are HR professionals the last group of workers it is safe to discriminate against?
Amid all the furore over the political-correctness-gone-madness of the Equality Bill last week, one comment stood out like a sore thumb for me.
Asked about the thorny issue of compulsory pay audits - which will not yet be mandatory for private firms looking only for private work - Katja Hall, of the CBI, made a most remarkable comment.
"They are very expensive and very time-consuming," she said. So far, so good. But wait for it.
"Pay gaps are not the result of discrimination - they are because many women would prefer to work in the HR department than the finance department, or that they prefer part-time work."
Hang on a minute. Decades of men earning up to 40% more than women in many firms are because women work in HR?
Now Katja is a sound business head at a very savvy employer group, and she often talks wisely to this magazine on HR issues. So what was she thinking using this example?
Was she suggesting that HR is less important to organisations than finance departments? That those in finance roles naturally deserve higher salaries than the silly pink-clad girls filling out sick leave forms in HR? It certainly appears so.
Just because more women happen to work in HR than men, and it is the other way round in finance, does not mean that the number crunchers should be paid more every time. In fact, the opposite is often true. Statistics out last year showed that many HR directors were earning up to £50,000 more than their equivalents in the finance department.
We asked Katja to elaborate on her comments but she was unavailable. We just hope she hasn't been hauled into HR to explain herself.
Comments (1)
Greg, I spotted this too. Thanks for digging out the stats on relative pay; I couldn't find any.
http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/women-are-paid-less-because-they-work-in-hr/
Posted by Rick | July 2, 2008 1:26 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 13:26