Pay inequality, degraded employee retention, and employee layoffs are some hot topics that are on everyone’s lips nowadays. So, what is the major reason behind these?
When employees are not happy with the pay, they tend to search for opportunities elsewhere. Also, due to the great wave of resignations, the initial salary for the employees is quite high as compared to before. And existing employees are also aware of the gap and are asking for hikes.
With this article, we will evaluate these points in brief and understand the current employment market trends.
What are the current market trends?
68% of the hiring managers told employees have asked for a hike or threatened to quit the job regarding pay discrepancy within 12 months- survey by Capterra. We can learn the following things from the survey:
- Most companies are increasing the new hire pay:
Due to the recession and the great wave of resignations, employers are forced to hire employees with higher pay. The employees have a lot of options now. They are looking for income that will help them have a secure future. Also, now they do not have to worry about location barriers, and they are still expecting companies to offer work from home.
- Nearly half of the employees are aware of the pay inequality
This creates bitterness among the group when employees know they are not being paid equally. It also demotivates them and disinterests them in doing any work.
- Companies are not keen on increasing the existing employee pay:
There are different scenarios for this situation. Sometimes the employee demands more than is necessary, and other times the employer simply decides not to raise the pay based on performance. This results in layoffs and lower employee retention.
- Employees are threatening to work somewhere else.
With all the pay inequality in workspaces, employees are not motivated to work in the same organization. This encourages them to change the organization and find a new role.
For any employee to feel valued, there must be no inequality in pay. The unequal pay will eventually lead to clashes in your organization.
An existing employee leaves the current organization due to pay inequality and finds somewhere else for a better opportunity and joins with much better pay. This is the vicious cycle that goes on if there is unequal pay in the organization. So, how do we rectify it?
Tips to rectify pay inequality in workspaces
1. Generate regular reports:
You should do compensation audits regularly to see where your employee stands. You should review the salaries once a year to determine any salary gaps. Make sure you fill the gaps and don’t wait until they are not even achievable.
Also, when you review the salaries, make sure you keep in mind the promotions and role changes.
2. Have transparency:
Make sure that all the decisions you are taking are backed by strong data. If you are giving a hike to some employees but not others, you must track the parameters when you make the decision.
For a healthy office environment, you must maintain transparency with your employees.
3. Look beyond money:
Retaining an employee is not all about money. For sure, it is one of the major concerns, but not everything. Your employees need to feel valued in your organization.
You must also consider the other monetary incentives that you can give to your employees. For instance, you can give your employees more vacation time, flexible work options, and team outings so they know they are valued.
4. Focus on career growth:
Employees are better retained in organizations wherein they are given more opportunities to grow their careers. You must start by analyzing the skills gaps for your employees to provide them with the ideal training.
Make sure your training program is benefiting the employees and helping them upskill. To help them educate better, you must create engaging training programs. This can be done with the help of the learning management system.
How can you deploy LMS for better training programs?
If you will give the training programs as a new task to the employees, it is a possibility that they will drain out and not show interest in the course. So, let us see how can you create interactive courses with the help of LMS to retain the employees better:
1. Better efficiency
The employees can learn better as there are no time or geographical constraints. They can learn whenever they want to. You can train the employees to use downtime well and reduce the productive hours that can be used for other work.
2. Social learning
You can easily integrate social learning with the help of your LMS. The software helps you build an academy that consists of features like “community” or “discussion forums” to promote better communication among employees.
3. Cohort learning
The employees can learn according to their convenience. Also, you can make short courses that are easily retained by the employees.
Rather than making hours of courses, you can make 15-20 minutes of courses. So, the employees can acquire the knowledge at whatever time suits them.
How deploying LMS will help you as an organization?
1. Reduced training costs
Learning allows you to save money on the costs of creating courses, creating study materials, traveling, and so on. It helps you produce better ROI than the traditional methods.
2. Data-oriented approach
To ensure that your employees are learning the right things, you must also analyze the results. With the help of LMS software, you can easily analyze the progress of your courses and how well your employees are performing. This will assist you in developing better courses as well as tracking employee knowledge retention using metrics.
3. Better feedback
You can receive better and fast feedback from your employees with the help of the software. The feedback can be received in the form of forms, audio, recorded videos, etc.
Along with avoiding pay inequality, you should also ensure you are giving appropriate training to your employees to upskill.