Google found that some male software engineers received less pay than women last year, resulting in pay adjustments for thousands of men.  That led to Google paying $9.7 million to adjust pay for 10,677 employees.

In the company’s blog, Google said, “There are a couple of reasons that the pay equity analysis required more adjustments in 2018, compared to 2017. First, the 2018 analysis flagged one particularly large job code (Level 4 Software Engineer) for adjustments. Within this job code, men were flagged for adjustments because they received less discretionary funds than women. Secondly, this year we undertook a new hire analysis to look for any discrepancies in offers to new employees—this accounted for 49 percent of the total dollars spent on adjustments.”

The purpose of the study is to “make sure that the modeled amounts, and any changes made by managers, are equitable across gender and racial lines,” wrote Lauren Barbato, Google’s people analytics research manager, in the post published on Monday.

While the analysis is meant to ensure compensation is fair, Barbato said in the post “that’s only part of the story” because it did not take starting salaries for each employee into account – called leveling – or an employee's subsequent trajectory through the company.

“Because leveling, performance ratings, and promotion impact pay, this year, we are undertaking a comprehensive review of these processes to make sure the outcomes are fair and equitable for all employees,” Barbato wrote.