Syngenta’s open and transparent approach in Switzerland in addressing pay equity in a sustainable way and building trust with employees is a model for Syngenta around the world. Read on to learn how we have done this.
This best practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
EAME Reward Manager, Syngenta Crop Protection at Syngenta
As a world-leading agricultural company with operations in over 100 countries, our business success reflects the quality and skill of our people. A diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace are enablers of our ambition to bring greater food security in an environmentally sustainable way to an increasingly populous world.
To fulfill our ambition, we want to recruit and retain the best talent in the industry, and we want employees to feel confident that we are paying them fairly and equitably. That is why equal pay is an integral part of our D&I agenda: We consider it to be much more than a project. In fact, it is a journey, where we gradually embed the principles into our culture, policies and processes.
Pay equity is not just about analyzing compensation data, identifying issues, and fixing them. It is not just about the pay gap between men and women either, but needs to take other factors into consideration, including ethnicity, disability and age.
We started some years ago formally analyzing the more obvious individual gender pay gap cases. This proved to be an important first step for us to identify and address disparities via a specific gender pay budget and considering insights from talent and performance reviews. However, it was clear that addressing only the most urgent cases to close the pay gap was neither enough nor sustainable. Yet it served the purpose to bring the topic on the agenda, to raise awareness across the organization, and to pave the way for the next steps.
It might sound trivial: Making fair, balanced offers to both external hires and internal transferees is key to address the pay gap and prevent inequality. Being clear about the value of the job needs to be the deciding factor – and in some cases override what the candidates may have in mind and how well they may negotiate. All parties involved in recruitment and salary determination (Line Manager, HR Business Partner, Recruiter) need to be aware of this principle and of the consequences unbalanced offers will have. In that context, a certain mindset shift is required – it might very well be that the package offered even exceeds a candidate’s initial expectations.
To learn about and to understand potential pay equity issues, it is important to foster a culture that encourages employees to speak up about it – not only during their performance review meetings, but also in what we call “Pause2Talk” sessions. These are regular exchanges where employees and line managers talk about different topics in a more informal way. Furthermore, we foster a trustful and constructive cooperation with our employee representatives where pay equity is a key item on the agenda. Another example is our job evaluation appeal process, where employees can contest the work level of their job. As part of co-determination rights, our employee representatives also have a seat on the table.
Embedding pay equity into the organization requires effort and continuous engagement. Hence, it has become an essential part of HR trainings for recruiting managers, recruiters, and HR Business Partners. In addition, HR and Compensation & Benefits Policies need to facilitate pay equity. The compensation, be it for new recruits or for internal job changes, is mainly determined by objective factors (job evaluation, benchmarking, salary bands) and the individual capabilities candidates possess, rather than the line manager’s individual view. Analytics from external recruitment data in Switzerland for the last three years show no relevant gender discrepancies.
This along with the positive results from the 2021 Equal Pay Analysis for the entire Swiss workforce give us confidence and encouragement to take on a new global initiative, where we plan to investigate pay equity in more detail on a worldwide scale. Based on comprehensive analytics, Syngenta will look deeper into this topic and address local issues. We are confident that our perseverance and determination will – literally – pay off.
If you would like to know more about our pay equity journey, please feel free to contact Thomas Stietzel at thomas.stietzel@syngenta.com.
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