Dawn’s inside track: let’s not lose sight of all our hard work to date – part two

Last month I wrote about how proud reward and HR professionals should be of their work during the coronavirus pandemic. In a very short period of time businesses have been completely turned on their head, from shifting to home working to completely changing what they manufacture.

The long-term implications of the pandemic are still a relative unknown, but I believe it is important that we don’t lose sight of all of the hard work reward professionals had been doing prior to the outbreak, and how we can move these things forward in our ‘new reality’.

Back in January

Can you remember what your objectives were at the beginning of the year? What were the ‘big picture’ things you wanted to achieve?

Perhaps you wanted to continue to work on closing your gender and ethnicity pay gaps, or were considering launching new employee benefits, undertaking pay audits or rolling out a new communications tool. Whatever you were working on, chances are the aim was to improve things for employees in one way or another.

That goal hasn’t changed. In fact, coronavirus has caused many businesses to step up and accelerate plans to introduce new wellbeing benefits, for example. Or to expand their benefits to include more of the workforce.

However, even though there has been much good to come from employers during this pandemic. Some projects have inevitably been put on the backburner. REBA’s research into employers’ actions during the crisis show that 7% of companies have cancelled pay reviews (including pay rises and promotions), while 32% have postponed them.

Pay audits were also cancelled in 1% of businesses and postponed in 9% of them, and pension reviews were postponed in 11% of companies.

These findings are unsurprising, but what do they mean for those bigger picture goals?

A long term view

On 24 March the Government Equalities Office and the Equality and Human Right Commission suspended gender pay gap reporting regulations due to the coronavirus pandemic. This meant there was no expectation for employers to report their gender pay gaps for 2019/20.

It was suspended on the premise that, due to the pressure companies were under, it was only right to suspend reporting for 2019/20. There are, of course, arguments for and against this. An extension to reporting may have been a better solution. However, this is water under the bridge. What really matters now, is how things move forward to ensure momentum to close the gender pay gap is not lost as a result of this suspension.

This is just one example of a ‘bigger picture’ issue, that should not be forgotten about.

Silver linings

A silver lining of coronavirus is perhaps how it has accelerated conversations around broader societal issues, such as:

pay fairness, particularly for the lower paid in society
the need for fairer employment contracts
executive remuneration levels, whether they should take pay/bonus cuts
investors’ renewed focus and criticism of executive pay levels
the ability for people to work from home
broader environmental concerns and how lockdown has improved things.

As we move forward in our ‘new reality’ it feels as so though reward professionals will be increasingly focused on these broader societal issues and how they can address them within the context of their own organisation.

We are all having to reassess our priorities and goals. But whatever you were working on in January, chances are it is still relevant today, and so we shouldn’t lose sight of those aims, we should just look to refocus them in the context of today.

The author is Dawn Lewis, content editor at REBA.