I spent the last couple of days at WorldatWork's Workplace Equity Forum. It was a terrific example of thought leadership, practical ways to improve pay equity, and connection.

As I listened to a variety of speakers and talked with other attendees, I realized what I wasn't hearing.

We won't cause a positive sustained change in workplace equity without empathy.

We talked about leaders who are afraid to post the salary range on job postings. "What if our current employees realize they are being paid less than new hires?"

We talked about using statistics to determine if gender, race or ethnicity are being used in pay decisions. "What if we find out we are biased as we make pay decisions? What if we don't have the budget to fix it?"

We looked into the future with the help of Syndio and others and talked about opportunity equity and contractor pay equity. "Holy cow. This is a train coming down the tracks FAST and we aren't ready!"

We talked about the employers leading the way and willing to allocate resources (headcount, budget, and time) to solve their pay inequities. "What if I can't convince my CEO that this is important to prioritize?"

We talked about fear based decision making. Each employer has about 30 days to decide if they are going to be pay equity leaders (proactive) or focused on compliance only (defensive).

In each interaction with each other, we get to choose to show up as empathetic...or not. Do you seek to understand and share the feelings and needs of others? Or do you see them as producers - human doings not human beings?

Empathy is walking in other people's shoes.

We can choose to lead with our head or our heart.

Improving workplace equity is going to require us to do both.

We need to tell stories with data AND we need to understand what others are feeling and communicate with empathy and compassion.

#empathy #workplaceequity #payequity #humanresoures #leadership