Canadian leaders step up for gender pay parity

Unbounce, a Canadian software company has launched ‘Pay Up for Progress’, a new initiative aimed at urging business leaders to prioritize gender pay parity* within their organizations. 

Leaders from across the business spectrum are being asked to take the ‘Pay Up for Progress’ pledge, confirming their commitment to prioritizing equal pay and undertaking the work needed to analyze and close the gender pay gap in their organizations.

According to recent statistics, a woman makes $0.92 for every $1 made by a man in Canada even after adjusting for differences in industries, occupations, and rate of part-time work. Without adjustment, women make $0.87 for every $1 made by a man in Canada. The pay gap is wider for women facing multiple forms of discrimination, such as racialized women, trans women, and women living with disabilities.

Research also shows that when organizations make equal pay a priority, they’re 19% more likely to exceed industry-average levels of productivity and 54% more likely to beat industry-average turnover benchmarks.

A host of major Canadian tech firms have pledged early support for the initiative including, Traction on Demand, Allocadia, Kiite, Beanworks, and Thinkific.

Strategic advisory partners involved in the initiative include, Minerva BC, the Upside Foundation, Shopify, 7Geese, Work at Play, Cicely Blain Consulting, Talent Collective, HR Tech Group, and Forum for Women Entrepreneurs.

“Having navigated this complex process ourselves and found a pay gap that we were able to close, we understand how daunting this work can be. It’s especially difficult for small and medium-sized businesses which have limited resources and don’t know where to start.” said Leslie Collin, VP People & Culture at Unbounce. “Pay Up for Progress is our way of sharing what we’ve learned and giving our peers a roadmap to take those first steps and ultimately achieve and sustain gender pay parity. This process isn’t about doing the work perfectly, but firmly committing to making a start and continually improving.”

As part of taking the pledge, leaders will commit to:

• Undertaking a compensation analysis in order to identify any potential gender pay gaps within their organizations
• Outlining a plan of action to address what is found
• Resourcing the work required to continually address pay parity over time

Unbounce will provide a comprehensive compensation toolkit and support through a series of virtual workshops. Created by the team at Unbounce after their own journey reaching gender pay parity and backed by external experts, the toolkit offers a blueprint for how companies can begin to analyze their compensation and do the ongoing work to reach gender pay parity. 

Unbounce founder & CEO Rick Perreault said, “The principle of gender pay parity couldn’t be simpler—everyone should receive equal pay for equal work. As leaders, we have a responsibility to ensure that’s the case in our organizations — the onus should no longer fall on our employees to ensure they’re being paid fairly. I hope this moment in time, when we’re all being forced to reevaluate, can be a catalyst and create a meaningful ripple effect, not only across the Canadian tech landscape but well beyond.”

Over a three-month period, pledged companies will come together as a cohort to support each other, learn from one another, and hold each other accountable over a three month period. Each will be included in an active Slack community and invited to attend two virtual workshops where they will have access to experts in compensation, diversity and inclusion, and advancing women in leadership.

The formal portion of the campaign will wrap at the beginning of February, 2021.