A third of women say companies will never prioritise closing the gender pay gap
Just one day before the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) is set to publish employer gender pay gaps, new research from HR tech organisation HiBob has found that a staggering 61% of Australian women would consider leaving their job if they found out their company has a gender pay gap – regardless of how big the gap is.
While 61% of women would leave, only 36% of men express the same willingness to leave.
HiBob’s annual Women in the Workplace report assesses pay, job progression, leadership, job security and more, and aims to uncover the many issues women face in the workplace.
The publication of gender pay gaps looks to be the final straw for many women in the workplace, with only 36% saying organisations are doing enough to close the gap. In comparison, 55% of men said they are.
31% of women said their organisations “will never” prioritise closing the gender pay gap, according to HiBob’s research.
Pay has skyrocketed to the top reason for why women would look to a new job at a new company, with 78% saying that would be an encouragement – up 36% from last year.
It is followed by a strong and health company culture (43%), flexible work models (42%), and a clearer path to promotion (36%).
The pay gap was the tip of the iceberg in challenges Australian women face in the workplace, according to HiBob.
40% of women believe that men are promoted more often or quicker than women within their company, (compared with 18% of men who think this), while one in four women (26%) said that a colleague has made them feel uncomfortable or less qualified in the workplace based on their gender.
Nirit Peled-Muntz
Nirit Peled-Muntz, chief people officer at HiBob, said: “Pay is the foundation of the relationship between employees and employers – and if there’s a gap between genders, nothing damages that relationship more.
“I don’t believe organisations deliberately set out to pay one gender more than another, but we do have a problem in Australia, and it’s something organisations need to prioritise fixing. Because not only is pay equality fair, it helps improve profitability.
“Research by McKinsey says that companies with the highest levels of gender and ethnic diversity are 15% and 35% more likely, respectively, to have financial returns above their industry’s average.”
More than four in five women (83%) said organisations should conduct annual pay equality audits, and 84% said organisations should conduct performance and promotion audits annually to ensure they’re being done fairly.
84% of women also said organisations should promote and support diversity in leadership, and 79% said organisations should make diversity a core business value and foster an inclusive culture.
“Fixing the gender pay gap is the big ‘people challenge’ of our time, but an organisation can’t fix it if it doesn’t have the right employee remuneration data easily to hand,” added Peled-Muntz.
“Getting that information is key to understanding why a gender pay gap exists within an organisation so you can take steps to rectify it.”
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Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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