Friday Coffee Talk from Planet Fair: Recent Episodes
Margret Bjarnadottir and Henrike von Platen
Margret and Henrike discuss fair pay, equal opportunities and ideas for better workplaces. Dr. Margrét Vilborg Bjarnadóttir, who is an award-winning founder of the software company PayAnalytics usually drinks her cappuccino in Reykjavík or Washington, D.C. Henrike von Platen, founder and CEO of the FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab in Berlin, drinks her coffee either at Berlin Wannsee or on an island in the Atlantic.
The latest trends in AI and its growing impact in HR processes is one of the key points that Margret talks about with Henrike in this coffee talk live from Total Rewards ´25 in Orlando.
Join Henrike von Platen, CEO of FPI and Michelle Sequeira, CEO of Included, in this engaging coffee talk as they discuss the importance of embedding fairness and equity into talent management processes. Michelle shares her insights on data-driven approaches to ensure fair pay, reduce pay gaps, and address biases in recruitment and performance management. Learn about strategic and sustainable approaches to drive change and create thriving workplaces. Don't miss out on these valuable insights!
Today, we had an engaging coffee talk at Planet Fair. We delved into the intricacies of the Austrian tariff system and compared it with the German system, discussing the importance of fair initial wage placement and its long-term impact on employees' careers. We also explored methods for ensuring pay equity, including analyzing deviations from minimum pay and grouping employees effectively. A notable reference was made to the Google equal pay case, highlighting the significance of unbiased initial placement decisions. Join us in our journey towards Planet Fair!
In this episode Margret Bjarnadottir discusses the first steps towards pay transparency with the founder of Fair Pay Partners Vicky Peakman. Vicky has extensive experience in advising companies on pay equity and transparency and in this episode Vicky and Margret discuss how simplifying compensation policies are a key step towards pay transparency and how company and national culture affect how companies think about the journey to pay transparency.
In this episode, Henrike von Platen sits down with Dr Sue Black OBE, a professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University. They dive into the fascinating topic of bias in AI, discussing real-world examples and the implications of biased AI systems.
In this episode, Henrike sits down with Michael Elling a leadership and HR expert to discuss the importance of leadership, HR strategies, and the mindset needed for company growth. The episode highlights the significance of having the right leadership and HR value chain for company success and reflects on a fair pay success story.
Margret attended the EPIC (Equal Pay International Coalition) technical meeting and gives an update. During the two day meeting the discussion focused on persistent gender pay gap, the pension gaps and strategies for pay transparency. During her short remarks during the meeting Margret emphasized that we have to tools to drive the equal down to zero - yesterday!
What about benefits?
Mastering Pay Equity: Tackling Employee Benefits, Health Insurance, and Fair Compensation Strategies. Are your benefits truly fair? Join Henrike and Margret as they delve into the intricacies of employee benefits, health insurance, and fair compensation strategies. Gain valuable insights and practical advice on ensuring equity in your organization's benefits package.
After three years of intense coffee talks, Margret and Henrike took a well-deserved summer break that stretched into the fall, and now they're back in action! In Episode 66, they share what they've been up to and how their focus has evolved over the years. Tune in to catch up with them and hear about their exciting new directions.
Breitling is known for its expertly engineered timepieces. And in the last few years, the renowned watchmaker has also been applying its eye for precision and accuracy to a workforce goal: evaluating and minimizing its gender pay gap. This week, Henrike talks with Nadja Sirotkina, Breitling’s rewards and performance lead, about what she and her colleagues have learned during the company’s pursuit of pay equity.
This year's WorldatWork Total Rewards conference is over, and before flying out, Margrét fills Henrike in on all the exciting insights she gained from the event. These include focusing on job architecture to prepare for upcoming regulations like the European pay transparency directive, shifting from a job evaluation to a skill evaluation approach, and implementing AI in the compensation space. Listen to this extra Coffee Talk episode to get all the details!
The need for workplace gender equality is global—but business environments and local requirements vary tremendously from one country to another. This means that one-size-fits-all approaches and advice can often fall short. And any program that aims to help employers worldwide move towards fair pay must also be able to offer a highly individualized approach.
This is exactly the kind of program that the United Nations has set out to create. On this week’s coffee talk, program lead Salma Houerbi joins Margrét to talk about the UN Global Compact’s Target Gender Equality Accelerator.
Henrike brings a challenging case to the table for this week’s coffee talk. She’s been deeply involved in helping companies prepare for the EU pay transparency directive, and the directive requires companies to establish pay bands. The directive will also allow employees to ask for a comparison between their pay and the pay of their co-workers.
This means that employers must be able to explain to each employee exactly why their pay is what it is.
In this coffee talk with Henrike von Platen and Dietmar Knoess of the PUMA group, we hear about both the pleasant surprise and the challenges in PUMA’s journey into fair pay leadership.
It’s intuitive that a gender pay gap would leave women feeling less than satisfied in the workplace. But according to Sana Zafar, our coffee talk guest, the real effect is more nuanced. Pay gaps lead to lower satisfaction among both women and men, but through different mechanisms.
University of Iceland Researcher Thora Christiansen has been looking into why, despite Iceland’s intensive work on pay equity, there are still so few female CEOs. In this coffee talk, Thora joins Margrét to talk about her research into this problem—and a few possible solutions.
The pay gap is a well-known problem—but Margrét and her research collaborators are always looking for better ways to solve it. This week, Margrét tells Henrike about her new article in the Harvard Business Review. Written with PayAnalytics co-founder David Anderson and research partner David Gaddis Ross, the article describes a fresh and more effective approach to closing the pay gap.
The Coffee Talk team is back with renewed energy to discuss the piece of legislation that all European companies are talking about: The EU Pay Transparency Directive. Discover the key takeaways of the Directive and the first steps your company can take to comply.
To achieve and maintain pay equity, you need to ensure that compensation across countries, provinces and states, and cities is fair and equitable. But how do you do that?
Lightning round. In this week’s Coffee Talk, Henrike von Platen and Margrét Bjarnadóttir talk about the Reykjavik Global Forum – Women Leaders, which was held in Reykjavík on November 13-14, 2023. At the Forum, each session was short—and Henrike moderated an 18-minute session with four panelists on a particularly urgent topic: The rising cost of living.
In our latest installment of Coffee Talks with Planet Fair, Margrét has just returned from a visit to the Conference Board’s Executive Compensation conference in New York City with many lessons to share with listeners about bonuses, incentives, and base pay.
This week, Henrike caught up with Marcus Priest, Head of U.S. and R&D Rewards at Novartis, to learn about Novartis’ public pledge with the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC). Many companies have taken this pledge in their own way, committing to reducing inequalities through targeted goals that fit their organizational culture.
Join Margrét and Henrike on an insightful conversation about pay equity statements and discover what to include in those reports when communicating, both internally and externally, your organization’s pay equity philosophy.
In this week’s Coffee Talk, Henrike von Platen of Fair Pay Innovation Lab speaks with Marcus Priest, Head of Global R&D Rewards at Novartis, about communicating the pledge to become a fair pay organization. Listen to Novartis’ success story in this episode of the Coffee Talk with Planet Fair to learn more about how to build an internal communications strategy to support pay transparency—even across countries, continents, cultures—and to integrate a pay equity mindset into your organizational culture.
In this episode, Margrét and Henrike talk about certifications and their benefits. Tune in for an insightful conversation!
In this Coffee Talk, Margrét and Henrike answer your pressing questions about which pay equity KPIs to report on and how to communicate your journey. Tune in!
Pay Transparency: Employer Compliance Statistics Vary State-by-State. Why?
For our first Coffee Talk after a summer respite in the sun, PayAnalytics co-founder Dr. David Ryberg Anderson joins Margrét to discuss his recent research into the efficacy of pay transparency laws in the U.S. During the talk, the two focus on salary range posting in California, Colorado, and New York using data from Monster.com.
In this week's coffee talk, Henrike and Margrét followup on questions raised in Episode 46 about the applications of AI in HR. AI can make us faster and more efficient in some ways—speeding manual, tedious tasks, for example—but, if we aren't careful, biases can slip in and catch us off guard. Watch this coffee talk to learn about proactively monitoring AI tools in HR.
In this week’s coffee talk, Margrét and Henrike chat ChatGPT and its applications for HR. They coach us in best practices for posing questions to the chatbot to yield the most valuable answers for HR practitioners, and point out where (and why) to use caution. And did we mention there’s a side-by-side demo of ChatGPT3.5 and 4?
This week, Margrét speaks to Henrike von Platen from San Diego, where World at Work’s Total Rewards ‘23 conference has just wrapped up. So the topic of the day? Major takeaways, of course, at the meeting point of people analytics, great data infrastructure, and DEI goals.
Diversity will drop into place if your system is objective and stereotype-free. But what if it isn’t?
In ensuring pay equity, global companies contend with the need to account for cultural values across countries. Read on to find out how to address cultural differences in compensation decisions.
Among the practices that helped earn BMW its gold medal for universal fair pay leadership, the company allows joint leadership for some leadership positions. In this coffee talk, Margrét and Henrike discuss this practice: when can it be helpful to allow one full-time position to be filled by two part-time workers instead?
Margrét and Henrike talk about the variables that determine pay. Should older employees be paid more than young ones doing the same job? Are there alternative approaches to using age to represent experience? Our hosts also talk about employee performance, the most controversial (and possibly most fun) variable to measure.
In this week’s Coffee Talk, Henrike speaks with Astrid Siemes-Knoblich. Astrid served as mayor of her town in southwestern Germany. After her term was over, she realized that her predecessor and her successor — who were both men — were paid more than she was.
Margrét and Henrike talk about good news for pay equity: International Women’s Day and a major Universal Fair Pay Check win from BMW. The duo discuss why companies pursue fair pay certification. (It’s not just about employer branding – it can build lasting trust with employees.) Plus, they outline the two first steps companies take in order to get certified.
New pay transparency laws in many countries allow employees to ask for a salary comparison. But what happens when pay discrimination is revealed? In this coffee talk, Henrike talks with Gabriele Gamroth-Günther, who gives a firsthand account of her experience and her landmark legal case.
Margrét is joined by Alan Benson, an Associate Professor in the Work and Organizations Group at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. As Alan explains, many organizations ask managers to evaluate their subordinates as high, medium, or low for performance and potential. So an employee might be labeled a poor promotion candidate despite great performance (or vice versa). In a recent study, Alan found that managers systematically underestimate the potential of female subordinates.
Coffee Talk Episode 35 focuses on some illuminating research on gender bias. Margrét is joined by Julia Barnett, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University. Julia's research interests lie in algorithmic ethics and transparency, reducing the socio-technical harms of algorithmic systems, and deep generative applications in social contexts. Her recent study shows how patients perceive doctors differently based on the doctor’s gender. She examined over 400,000 online reviews of physicians.
In Episode 35, the first Coffee Talk session of 2023, Margret Bjarnadottir speaks with Salomé Germain Trigano. Salomé is an expert in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). She established Arba Advisory with the objective of guiding companies and universities in formulating and implementing a potent DEI action plan, fostering a more inclusive and diverse culture, and realizing ambitious and quantifiable objectives.
Where does the Equal Pay Gap come from? Are there any patterns? Like with all good questions, it depends!
As we know, increasingly organizations conduct pay equity audits, and integrating pay equity into compensation decision processes. Central to this analysis is the equal pay gap (also known as the adjusted pay gap). However the adjusted pay gap is not a static measure; every compensation decision, hiring and separation decision, impacts the gap. Then, how close is good enough? When is the pay gap closed? And when do we need to take action?
This time the discussion revolves around the Workplace Equity Forum in Austin Texas (World at Work).
Margret Bjarnadottir speaks with Rena Nigam, the CEO and founder of Meytier. Organizations around the world are focused on their Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DEI) initiatives, which more often than not include an emphasize of hiring and retaining diverse talent. But how do we do it? Meytier is an innovative company focusing on using AI to broaden the talent pipeline and supporting companies in reaching their DEI goals.
The topic of this episode is Geographic Pay Policies. What is changing? Should there be geographical pay differences? Has the pandemic changed this?
Margret and Henrike discuss how to prepare comply with requirements from new pay transparency legislation across the globe. For example, how to define salary ranges?
In this episode 28 of Coffee Talk, Margrét speaks with Karen Holtzblatt who has studied how to retain women in tech for decades.
Margret and Henrike talk about the binding pay-transparency measures in the new EU directive: 2021/0050(COD) Equal pay for equal work between men and women (pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms), and the MEPs back binding these measures. This directive is likely to have a big impact on organizations and companies.
Margret and Henrike discuss the exciting question of whether the opportunity to work in a home office, which is increasingly offered and used due to the pandemic, is actually a good or a bad thing - and have very different opinions and lots of food for thought.
Margret and Henrike chat about time and money over their coffees. And breaking time and money in work and compensation practices questions the underlying assumptions that have guided paid employment for so long.
After a break, Henrike von Platen and Dr. Margret Vilborg Bjarnadóttir are back - drinking their coffee and chatting about how to reach fair pay fast. Having discussed pay gaps and their underlying causes, the two will move further and tackle the big questions of work after the COVID-19 pandemic. From compensation strategies for remote work, measuring the value of work, developments in working time, to how companies can attract people back - Henrike and Margret absolutely agree - pay equity is an integral part of all these developments ahead.
In episode 23, Margret explains the reasoning behind analyzing the value of work and presents a new tool developed by PayAnalytics that enables the assessment of the worth of jobs and the comparison of groups performing different jobs with similar value, thereby facilitating the identification of any job undervaluation.
Henrike is joined by a very special guest in a very special place: Vidir Ragnarsson from PayAnalytics - who is visiting Berlin. They discuss the very promising situation in Iceland. Pay gaps are going down and companies are increasingly willing to share their gaps. Vidir Ragnarsson's advice: Start with the data and measuring and go on from there.
Margret is joined by has two guests: Rashmi Dixit and Kate Dixon, the partners and co-founders of Rakarising. Together they are on a mission to not only bring attention to oppressive pay practices, but to eradicate them. You can follow their work on rakarising.com.
Margret and Henrike are joined by Raafi-Karim Alidina, Consultant, Data & Product Lead at Included.
Margret and Henrike discuss this year's World at Work conference. One of the big topics at the conference is that many companies have great difficulties in finding new employees at all levels of qualification. In the U.S. in particular, companies are therefore looking at how to optimize reward packages and attract skilled workers. Because unlike in most European countries, US-American employees don't automatically get the benefit of health care or paid parental leave. But how could this reality be changed for the better?
Margret and Henrike discuss what the real state of equality is for French women. What laws are in place? How is pay equity measured? Is everything as progressive as it looks from the outside? Or do some things seem better than they really are?
Margret is the host of this episode and is joined by Katinka Brose from the Fair Pay Innovation Lab. They discuss a fair pay lawsuit filed by a German media maker who went to court against her employer in 2017. But what impact will this case have on jurisprudence in Germany, where fair pay lawsuits can be counted on two hands so far? To what extent is the type of contract decisive here, and how can gender discrimination in pay be determined?
Margret and Henrike discuss the many positive benefits of fair pay, how for example happier employees make for happier customers, and other more long-term domino effects. They also talk about the head start Iceland already has because equal pay started to be implemented earlier. Henrike, as always, takes every opportunity to talk about her favorite topic, money. And in the eighth and a half minutes, Margret spots an eleventh domino effect...
Margret and Henrike are joined by the Diversity & Inclusion expert, Stephen Frost, who is not only an old college friend of Margret’s, he was the first officer of inclusion at the London Olympics, founded the impact-led consultancy “Included” in 2012. Over coffee with Margrét and Henrike Stephen describes his remarkable journey: from a lobbyist for Diversity & Inclusion, wondering right from the beginning: Why wouldn't we want equal pay?.
Margret and Henrike discuss why companies always become unsure after the first attempt - because they are afraid of the results of the pay analysis. Often, they want to keep their fair pay efforts a secret at the beginning. But what exactly are they insecure about? And how can they be made less concerned about the analysis?
After a crazy week, Margrét and Henrike talk about a white paper that our amazing data addict from Iceland has been working on with her colleagues. The paper has the fantastic and promising title: There Are No Colourblind Models in a Colorful World. And it deals with such important questions as to how to apply AI successfully to HR, how it can change people’s lives, and how all our data reflect the past and its systematic lack of women. Super fascinating!
Margret and Henrike discuss how the diversity in workforces is reflected in working time arrangements and what effects this has on fair pay. Working time and fair pay are interlinked, but how exactly? Especially overtime or shifts and related pay and allowances have an impact on the pay gap. But is this fair? And how does this affect pay gaps?
Margret and Henrike discuss benchmarking. But how is fair pay compared? Does a company benchmark itself to other companies, or should it measure success based on its own standards? How important is salary when "more money" isn't even the most important reason to change a job, but most employees rather care about their careers? What impact has Covid had on salaries?
Margret and Henrike are joined by the strategy and policy expert Katinka Brose working at FPI with Henrike, and discuss many insights into the latest developments in European legislation. They talk about the International Pay Transparency Conference, where experts from around the world discussed the latest developments last week - and agreed on one thing in particular: More sanctions are needed.
Margret and Henrike discuss the International Pay Transparency Conference that took place on July 28, 2021. Margret and Henrike talk about major insights of the conference, best practices, and successful corporate strategies to close pay gaps - and not letting them open up again.
Margret and Henrike discuss the International Fair Pay Conference, in which Margret will participate (via videocall) as an expert. The focus of the conference will be on the new EU directive on fair pay, which is intended to ensure greater transparency across Europe. But what does transparency actually mean?
Margret and Henrike discuss buying power, and the fact that so many women of minorities in post-Covid context are considering leaving their jobs in pay equity... But most of all, it's about the question: Why is transparency so essential on the path to equality?
Margret and Henrike discuss Sweden, where a completely different course was set in terms of equality back in the 1970s. Our two pay gap experts take this as an opportunity to make a bold leap into the future.
Margret and Henrike discuss the process needed to value activities for a non-discriminatory pay system. How can work be valued? What is the best way to measure the value of different activities? How can similar and equivalent activities be compared? And do these questions have to be answered perfectly from the start?
Margret and Henrike discuss the question of all questions: What is the actual cost of closing the pay gaps? They also try to understand an astonishing paradox - in the beginning people assume everything is fine within their organization, but at the same time they fear that closing the gaps could be terribly expensive. But is that actually true? How expensive is it really?
Margret and Henrike discuss Italy: The country with the lowest participation of women in the labor market is finally making progress. They want to close the income gap at rocket speed. But how is Italy speeding up? Why should young women apply to Italian companies right now? And why is it so important to check your numbers first, before you start implementing measures? Find out all the answers in this eight-minute episode!
Margret and Henrike continue their last week's discussion about job evaluation systems but this time focused on unions. They talk about the importance of aligning your job evaluation scheme to the pay structure/decisions.
We are pleased to introduce The Friday Coffee Talk from Planet Fair, a business discussion hosted by Margrét and Henrike. During this 8-minute chat, the two pay gap experts discuss topics related to the fast moving world of pay equity. In this preview episode, they introduce themselves and encourage listeners to tune in.