The HR Community Podcast
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Civitas Talent is excited to bring you a series of podcasts dedicated to the HR community. This is a space where you can learn best-practice solutions from HR community leaders, with host Shane O'Neill.
Whether you’re a CEO, HR executive or operating across the wider HR sector - this podcast is for you!
The HR Community Podcast
The HR Community Podcast: Natalie Flynn, Equity CEO, Bridging the Gender Pay Gap
Discover how navigating the gender pay gap goes beyond mere compliance with Natalie Flynn, the trailblazing CEO of Equity. Natalie joins us with a wealth of knowledge and personal experience on the intricacies of pay equity. Her journey from Organisational Psychology to the Chief People Officer role and eventually founding a tech startup, uncovers the undeniable significance of real-time data and automation in crafting a fairer workplace. She passionately shares insights into the subtleties of adjusted versus unadjusted pay gaps and the power of deep analysis to unearth and address the root causes of inequality.
Cracking the code of leadership's influence on gender pay disparities, Natalie Flynn emphasises the transformative impact of a supportive C-suite. She unravels the thread between entrenched belief systems and the financial backing for equality initiatives, suggesting that a cultural shift within organizations is paramount. Listen in as we discuss the pivotal role of every leader in promoting equity and the strategic advice Natalie offers for businesses big and small to foster a more equitable environment. Her stories illustrate the magnetic pull of gender equity efforts on top talent procurement and retention.
Peek into the evolving landscape of the HR profession with Natalie, where we tackle the shift from administrative tasks to strategic influence and the isolation HR professionals often contend with. We explore anecdotes from Natalie's career, demonstrating the strategic value of HR in the realm of gender equity and the competitive edge it gives to organisations. Join us as we celebrate Natalie Flynn's dedication to equal pay, her exciting business journey, and the substantial strides being made in the pursuit of workplace equity.
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Welcome to the HR community podcast. My name is Shane O'Neill, founder of Sillatals Talent, the HR and HSC recruitment community. Each episode we will host HR leaders and discuss their journey and discover best practice HR solutions across the HR industry. Whether you're a CEO, HR executive or operating across the wider HR space, this podcast is for you. Please like and subscribe, and don't forget to comment and share your views. Enjoy the episode. Good morning everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the HR community podcast. This morning I'm excited to announce I am joined here with Natalie Flynn. Good morning Nat.
Speaker 2:Hello, so happy to be here today, thank you, I'm proud of it all.
Speaker 1:Good to have you, natalie. You are the CEO founder of Equity and I'm very keen to hear a little bit more about that as well. Did you want to maybe give us a quick intro, for those of listening that don't know who you are to tell us a little bit more about who you were and then we can talk a little bit more about your career in HR and a little bit more on your current venture.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Yes, I'm the founder and CEO of Equity. Equity is a tech startup that launched officially a year ago, so we're marketing for one year, but prior to that, we were pretty much a year building the product. I see how to career in HR and when I was in HR, I realised how difficult it was for companies to get their head around their gender equity challenges, including gender pay equity, and then how to bridge those. So why not, in the middle of the night, had this great idea that ended up being equity? But the platform is really to help HR professionals, leaders, executives understand their gender pay gaps in their business and then step towards closing them.
Speaker 1:Very good, amazing, huge topic at the moment, as you know, particularly at the HR table, a lot of companies really trying to figure out the DE and I trying to improve it, trying to analyse, trying to manage it. It's a huge topic, so we will definitely get into it. But let's track back a little bit as well, because I'd be really keen to hear a little bit more about your HR career, because you've worked in some really interesting roles now, some really interesting businesses and industries down through the years. So, oro, do you really tell us a little bit more about where it all started?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was one of those who never thought I'd end up in HR. So I studied Augsack and went and did my Masters and I'd end up being a management consultant. And then, when we started doing the HR modules, I really enjoyed the diversity of the role and I did end up. I remember one of the lecturers said most of you will end up in HR. I thought, no, that won't happen to me. I'm definitely going and doing management consulting. Before I knew it, I was in-house HR and just loved the role, and that was because any given day was so different. You were recruiting, one day you were doing succession planning and talent, the next day you were doing REM stuff, you were doing all the bits at the fabric of HR engagement culture and I just loved that diversity. I thought then about consulting would I go back and do it? And then I thought you know what I'd love to learn really deeply in an organisation and understand how it works from the inside out. And then I just fell into it and then stayed there for over 15 years.
Speaker 1:Amazing. That's fantastic. And then looking at equity again and thank you so much for the quick overview, or intro in the business. So I guess, like anyone that goes down the route of studying business or taking a fund on themselves and doing exactly what you're doing, what was the motivation there? You know, were you seeing there was certain gaps? Were you seeing there wasn't a lot of, maybe, support in this kind of space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was kind of. I call it a confluence of a number of different factors.
Speaker 2:So, I reached the CPO level within my HR career when I got there it was the first time I kind of encountered gender bias in the workplace. So basically what I accepted the first role, it was a 40% pay reduction. For my previous role it was roughly around 50% less than what the benchmark was for the role and it was around anywhere from 50% to 60% upwards compared to my male peer group. I was when I took the role. You know, prove yourself and everything will work itself out. So I thought perfect, that's no problem. Of course I'll prove myself, I've got this. And I went and really over delivered on a number of things that after kind of two years and top performance ratings two years in a row as well nothing changed. So I had to have a bit of an awkward conversation with the global team.
Speaker 2:I put the data in front of them and explained and basically I was the only female executive at that time as well. I explained to him kind of you know, this is what the role should be. Here's the benchmark data. Here's where it's at. Here's what I was on previously. Let's have a look at this. So he was inspired when he's seen the data and fixed it straight away, and I had an incredible career with that business.
Speaker 2:but it really pointed out to me that it's really challenging for execs to really get to Nathan and understand those things and, coming from HR, when you are HR, there's no one there to support you. You're busy sorting out what else in the business and there's no one there to kind of advocate or back you, and so I had to kind of step forward and do that myself. So I realized that you know there's probably heaps of other people in that spot, but also, as a HR professional, how do you understand this yourself? When it is complex that you need to pull through, there's the element of it needing to be in real time and then step through all that. So I thought if we could automate the kind of grunt work in it in terms of dealing with every HR person knows all these spreadsheets that you have on the go when you're looking at things like this.
Speaker 2:So if we could automate that, then could we push into other areas. The other thing then that kind of triggered me as I was looking to build the product was okay. So look at areas that take really a lot of time, that burns your hours, and focus how we can automate. So one of those was the WGA report.
Speaker 2:And in nature gets a chill down their spine when it comes to that time of the year to do it. Yeah, so I remember myself. Every year I do the report, my team would work on it with me, I'd do the sign off, I would work through and the questionnaire part would be you know, do you have a gender equity strategy?
Speaker 1:do you have?
Speaker 2:a rent or leave? Do you have a domestic violence policy? And a lot of them we tick yes to, but there were some that we tick no to, and every year I aspire to you know, buy the next year, put it in place.
Speaker 2:But by the time you did the report and did all the data, all the spreadsheets, you kind of breathed a sigh of relief and handed in and like, pat yourself in the back Great, we've done that, we got through the year. But the work should have really only started then, because you wanted to close those gaps on where it was really hard to find the info and it took up so much time during the reporting that by the time you got to let's put in a gender equity strategy, you didn't know where to find one.
Speaker 2:It wasn't really simple.
Speaker 2:There's lots of research out there and there's lots of presentation on it, but to lift one in a commercial sense for you to get a good feel and embed in your business was really challenging. So when we built the platform it was okay, let's automate the WGA reporting, let's cut out all the manual side of that, and then they'll give people the ability to go and put I call it the gender ecosystem, so the bits that sit around gender, to help people put them in place. So the platform, whilst it automates WGA reporting, it also serves actions with the content to go do that. So if you needed a gender equity strategy, it would be serving you the content to go do it.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, amazing, and the WGA I think was about 10 years ago, from RAIS Maybe a little bit more have made some amazing improvements in the industry, but there's still a major gap, particularly with the ginger side of things. So maybe tell us a little bit about that gap and, for those who are maybe listening maybe they're running a business, maybe they're an executive in or outside of HO what does that gap maybe currently look like, natalie, and how do we address it essentially, yeah, yeah, it's the million dollar question. It is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically the gender pay gap in Australia. There's two numbers that we talk to. The first number is from the ABS and that's 13%, but that's based on full-time employees only. The number I prefer to reference is the WGA number, which is the 22.8% gender pay gap. It includes full-time, part-time and casual. I prefer that number and that's total rem as well, but I prefer that because if we exclude part-time and casual, the majority of those employees and those cohorts are women, and then we exclude a business part of the market. So I talk to the 22.8%. Our progress has improved somewhat, but it's still fairly stagnant. So the WGA have introduced these new changes because they feel that we're not making progress quick enough as a nation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that's amazing and which is really interesting because I'm on the HR recruitment side of it and you've come from a really strong, diverse HR career and you've probably seen, as I have, a lot of the effort and the investment that goes into it but to hear that there's still a major gap and it's not performing as well.
Speaker 1:I've had a couple of different guests on the show over the last couple of months in particular and we've talked a lot about leadership and beliefs and I find this kind of stuff, particularly around ginger pay, quite interesting because I look at it as in. There's a belief system there that for leaders, do they truly believe in it and if so, they're most likely going to invest in it. The leaders that probably don't have that belief for whatever reason, and they may not ever admit it it's probably tougher for them to invest in that. So the beauty of the legislation it really helps to, I guess, push companies and leaders and business owners in the right direction. But where I'm sort of going with this now is, from your experience, what would you say would be if you're a company or a leader now listening, what would you say to be some of the key advantages for a company investing in ginger pay gaps and really investing in trying to promote best practice to E&I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question and I think kind of following on from the previous with Australia's progress. So, yeah, since launching the product, for me when we built the product it was a no-brainer. It was how do we integrate data in real time so we can see it, to take the load off, so we can focus on? And you talk about our progress not moving at the speed we would have liked in Australia.
Speaker 2:I think there's a large part of that because we're so focused on compliance. So, because we're doing all the WGA, because we're doing all that work, we think that's kind of gender work done where it's actually not just the start of it. That's where we start. Give it the iceberg. So I think that we haven't progressed because we're focused on compliance and not taking action and that's the roadblocks that I would get with equity. So stop with the manual stuff, let's automate it and then you can take action forward. It's been fascinating talking to people about it because I understand there's a lot of noise around the gender pay gap, but to actually understand what that is, there's so many different layers to it.
Speaker 2:So when you talk about the headline figures and I call them headlines they're aggregate numbers. So Australia's gender pay at 22.8%, that's aggregate. That's the difference in average salaries between women. It's a headline figure. You've got to understand the detail underneath that. So when you have your gender pay gap, well what is driving that and bringing that right down to a like for like or a role by role level? And that's where the beauty of our platform brings you right down.
Speaker 2:See it, but that's really challenging to understand in a business because at the moment, if they're doing their pay equity analysis, it's point in time and it takes so much effort because if you're dealing with thousands of different roles, you need to understand it by your overall number, which is at the moment the way the WGA measure. It is your average, because then you might want to look at the median to take out the outliers. You might want to look at it by departments do different departments have different gender pay gaps and, if so, what's going on and then drill it right down to the role. So you can imagine doing this.
Speaker 2:Let's say we do that today. That's fantastic. We got a head around it, we've got some metrics and changes, some recommendations, but by tomorrow that might change because you've got people moving around and people going out, and so that's the challenge for business at the moment. I think, when we talk about it, there's two types of pay gaps.
Speaker 2:There's an adjusted pay gap, which is those headline figures. So that means that you're not adjusting for any other variables or factors. And then there's the adjusted pay gap and that's when you get right into the like for like, and is there a difference in terms of pay equity between individuals within a business based on? Is it experience driving it? Is it education driving it? What exactly are those factors? That companies need to get to, but that can be challenging if you're manually doing that in a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Like that automation, that platform that you mentioned, like it's certainly in your brain, I mean for a company, nas, and I know that we talked a little bit about this offline as well. Like you've dealt with smaller companies, larger companies and everything in between, you know, depending on your size and depending on your you know your current structure or established nature as a business. You know what sort of advice would you give these companies. Is it worth, you know, having a champion or a team? Specifically looking at the page under gaps, and I know a lot of bigger companies will have the reward and performance teams, but maybe for smaller companies, you know who does the sort of book start and stop with, or is it across the whole leadership team? You know what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question as well. So I think, with anything, we've got to think of it when we start moving to address these things as really a cultural shift from what we're doing, because even in Australia, although the WGA have been collecting and have a really great data set over a number of years, it's still early days for companies dealing with it on.
Speaker 2:So I think we do need to leave from the top. One of the things is having your CEO visibly champion gender equity. That's a really strong signal to the business, because I've worked and seen both scenarios. I've seen when it's been HR led and that's great, but it's not HR's problem to solve in isolation. Hr have the tools, the systems and the process, but they often aren't the decision makers, and that's why it's so important that you have the whole leadership team and it being an objective of the business to move forward something like this. Otherwise, it's like any cultural change that you're going to go through. You need everyone aligned at the top to be able to push it forward, because you will hit bumps on the road. Some of it doesn't change overnight. A lot of this is systemic issues.
Speaker 2:I spoke at the start about gender bias. A lot of the time, that's unconscious bias. People don't even know they're doing it. They don't know when it's behavioural. So, ultimately, one of the things I've been really pleased about with the platform and seeing it working in organisations is it's changing the language and the culture and the behaviours around it. We had one specific client that's in the platform and on International Women's Day they said to me Nat, can you come and do it like we'd love to do a town hall and announce that we use equity and bring money in and explain to them? I said that is fantastic. So I went to it and they had a whole organisation there. I was just blown away by the impact they were openly discussing. Here's our gender pay gap today. Here's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Here's our representation of women across the board. Here's what we're trying to do. I just couldn't believe it was just such an open dialogue and an open forum. When I finished the call I walked away from that going. That's amazing because what we've managed to do and I never thought of this when building the platform we've given a language and the fabric of culture within the organisation to give permission to have these conversations. It's something that was kind of taboo in the past to talk about anything, but now we're changing that because we have a tool or a platform to start those conversations that can often be quite awkward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. It's like what we were talking, a little bit offline as well. In terms of approaching those kind of conversations, it can be quite challenging for people. I'm going to loop back to something you mentioned earlier. When you were in that situation, you clearly identified the gap and then you provided the data to show hey, this is where I should be For people that are listening and going. I haven't had that conversation. I want to have that conversation. How do I have that conversation? What's the advice maybe or processing that that you would give those employees out there who are thinking I need to speak to my manager about this or I need to speak to our business about this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, it's such a tough conversation. I'm generally pretty outgoing, I'm pretty direct but I've had it so hard and it took me years to work up the courage to do it, because you build these relationships and I had great relationships with the leaders. I don't think anyone intentionally set out to do it right.
Speaker 2:It was just kind of played out and I didn't want to risk any of the great relationships I'd spent years building to have a really awkward conversation, but I knew it needed to happen because I knew my worth, my value, what I was adding to the business, and I knew, to be happy, I needed to sort it out. It's so much easier said than done. I guess that I would say is do the groundwork yourself and understand and in NHI, hopefully you do have access to market data on this stuff but understand where you think you should be get the feedback to support it, so it's not coming from pure emotional gut feeling.
Speaker 2:bring the data to support it and also know where you're trying to get to have a figure of the things that you're trying to get to, because otherwise you might go in and then you're going to leave the conversation probably more disappointed than what you were going to be for. I would really say don't just go in saying I just need an increase in pay and not know where you're trying to. That's what I'd say. Do your groundwork, get the data and know where you're trying to head it and be positioned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good plan. It's a really good way of approaching it. I think you touched on a little bit there. As well as making sure you're not going to be disappointed, these conversations may not be received with a simple oh yeah, absolutely straight away.
Speaker 1:We'll get that sorted for you. It's about having what's the outcome you're looking for here, what's the figure in mind or whatever the case is, and then having the data and really having that transparent conversation. That links back to something that you mentioned earlier, particularly with our clients on your platform, where the whole business rocked up to your presentation. It's about having that culture where it's okay to have these conversations, it's okay to talk about it, it's okay to negotiate about it, I think as well. Just touching on something you said earlier when you mentioned your example of a specific pay gap with one of your roles and then you met the decision okay, I'm going to prove myself and get there Do you think? That's where things are still out, with some organisations and individuals, obviously, where they feel, okay, well, I'm not where I need to be, but maybe if I prove myself, that's the outcome I'll get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. I think the HR profession in particular is one that is really unique.
Speaker 2:So within a business, we're the ones that everyone comes to and we help everyone and try and solve everyone's problem for them. But when it comes to us, we often don't have anyone to help us and often we're dealing with such confidential information that we can't even discuss it. And that was certainly my issue is like I couldn't go to one of my friends or peers at work and race. I'm not going to discuss this with them because it was not really appropriate to be discussing my issue or my salary with my group. So you end up in this kind of lonely position at times.
Speaker 2:But I think HR, because of how the role has evolved so much over the past even 10, 15, 20 years, we've come from a place where it was originally kind of more of a when it was personnel management or more administrative side, into it being a real strategic lever, and so we just haven't quite caught up with that.
Speaker 2:And if they haven't worked with, you know with it with a strategic HR team, they still default to it's an admin role and that was certainly some of the mixed mesh of what was going on in my scenario as well, because it was their first senior HR role that hadn't had strategic HR it had kind of come more of a place of admin initially and then building that out. So that's some of the challenges that you don't get necessarily in other roles because you're going through HR. So even if it's kind of a new, a new role that you see come out, hr are kind of more independent in that that when it's yourself, your function, your profession, it's very hard for you to be that objective person in it. But you're also trying to kind of prove it and show what that kind of strategic HR kind of uses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's such a great point. It's such a great point because, yeah, like you say, even though it's evolved so greatly as a profession, I feel like we're still, we're still proven that we're still trying to, you know, really showcase what we can do. And you know, often, you know, in doing that, we sacrifice maybe our own salary, for example, or, you know, resources or whatever the sort of case is. Would you say as well, like for organisations maybe, who are still approaching this page under gap page, under equity process, as a purely compliance piece, like would you say that they're missing a huge trick here in terms of attracting talent, retaining talent, engaging their workforce. You know, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Another thing that's in slurging equity I kind of didn't expect when we first launched last it was actually right around this time last year One of the things I did was someone contacted me and said you need to get to the, the ATC, the Australasian teleconference. I was like oh really, kind of I thought more HR was probably our space. But you know, it's kind of new. We're just out there. Maybe I'll have a test run, you know, at the ATC, at the recruitment site, before working my way across to the HR side. So I went to that. They asked me to do a pitch. It was the first time I'd ever pitched. I was, you know, classic HR person in the office, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't do anything like this. I was a bit like, oh my God, what are you doing? What have you done with your life? But I thought okay. I'm going to get used to this. If this is what I've got and done, this is. You know I need to earn this and step into it. So I went and did it. I honestly thought to be about 10 people there.
Speaker 2:I thought it's like you know, you see on TV these little pitch things. I thought that's fine. I went there and it was a whole conference. It was like 500 people stopped the whole thing and I was number one out there, but the audience, there was a couple of awards and the audience actually vote for an award. And then there's another recruitment award as well and he was fortunate enough to win both of them and I just couldn't believe how it was received, because they said at the conference it was a landslide victory and I think of the fake investment dollars we got a little bit and the next one behind us got three.
Speaker 2:So I was blown away by the impact it had made and how much it resonated with people. But from the talent side, they've been some of our biggest supporters, and I'll figure it out why. Because when I built it I thought, absolutely, this is like so much. But when I started talking to recruitment and to talent people, they were saying that we see this, day in, day out, we're dealing with candidates on the way through, having those discussions, and we see the difference in behaviours between even how many of them associate, and so they were saying it front-hand.
Speaker 2:So I was like, ah, okay. So from the point of view of, are we missing a trick if we don't push forward on?
Speaker 2:this I think so because another quick example in terms of the talent being I was helping a different client in a business they were in and they were recruiting for an accountant role. The accountant came in it was a male, dominated industry and she was their preferred candidate. And she came back for the second round and she walked into the office. It was a face-to-face and said I really love the sound of the role, it sounds like a great opportunity, but it just feels so male, dominated the industry. So the CFO was the hiring manager, turned around and explained to you. He goes yes, it is, but here's what we're doing about it. And he spoke to having equity. He was able to speak to their representation, explain what they were doing about it and she was so thrilled by hearing something like this that she signed like, took the job on the spot and it was so amazing to actually see that.
Speaker 2:So I think what we're dealing with these days is the workforce coming through and the future talent is tuned with not just gender equity, all forms of DEI and ESG it's important to them. And so I think that if you can signal to the market that you are doing something in this space and I'd say something beyond just ticking a box, because I think to some extent like kind of sick of hearing that you know you've ticked a box, you've got a policy for this, you've got a strategy for this.
Speaker 2:You've got that. They want to hear more on kind of the tangible outputs and I think their gender pay gap and increasing representation of women, particularly as they grow through the business, is becoming much more important. So I'm just a future of where it's going.
Speaker 1:I really love that example and also, I think you know if you are listening and you are operating in those different industries, you know I think they're really important questions to ask. If you're interviewing, you know what is your approach, what is your strategy to page in your gap, because it's most definitely there. So I think I think it's a really good question to maybe probe your interview or probe the recruiter who's representing you for the role and get a good understanding of where the company are at. And I think it's really good to hear that there are companies acknowledging we're not where we need to be, but this is what we're doing to get there and I think that goes goes a long way. We are running a little bit out of time. That's sorry, we're running a bit over, but I just had a couple of quick questions for you, maybe, as we just wrap up. Which I'll be really intrigued to learn from you is what the first one who's your biggest influencer?
Speaker 2:I have many of them. I don't think it's just one person, but I'm with an incredible entrepreneur who was a CEO, leading a business as well, and I learned so much from him just in terms of how he used and leveraged relationship as a really strategic lever for how he did business, and I learned so much my HR career from that, which was really good. But also I don't know, I like to read a lot and get used from different people, so I wouldn't say it's just one person. I'd like to take bits and a little bit of the best of everyone I think is a good mix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have your little mastermind group. I love it and I was good. The next question I was going to ask you was kind of right off from the last one. Best lesson learned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had so many. I'd say one of the best has been jumping out and doing my own out of a HR career. I've learned everything in between. It's like running your own payroll. I never had to do that before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think one of the best lessons is just to keep going right back yourself. And if you believe in something strong enough and you have purpose and vision, you just got to keep going because you're going to have some good wins. For every step forward you'll take a step back, but you just got to keep going. So I think, back yourself, persevere.
Speaker 1:Love that. And then last one for you Was if anything frustrates you, Not moving forward or not getting stuff done.
Speaker 2:I really actually focus on love to just get stuff done. If I feel like I can't move forward, I get really frustrated. So I'm always looking for a way to keep moving forward and keep momentum.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love it. I love the energy. I am really pleased that you could care about some time to join us this morning, natalie. We've obviously been speaking a little bit and I've been watching a lot of your journey with the business and you've just come back from the US and it's all very exciting. So I really wish you the best of luck with everything and, obviously, if you are listening, feel free to reach out to Natalie to talk a little bit more about equity and what they can do as a business for you. Thanks again. Thank you, thank you for tuning in to the HR community podcast. Remember to like and subscribe and share your views and comments below. This podcast was brought to you by Civitas Talent, the HR and HSC recruitment community. Whether you're a candidate looking for a new role or organization looking to secure brand new talent for your team, please get in touch with us today. Thank you.
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