Following US Department of Labor accusations, Google insists on its commitment on equal pay

Following complaints from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) regarding its alleged unfairness with regard to compensation between men and women, Google issued a blog post to clarify its position and tell us a little more about how things actually work…

As per Eileen Naughton, the company’s VP of People Operation, Google was “taken aback” by the OFCCP’s assertion, which has seemingly come out “without any supporting data or methodology” — essentially making claims that do not, in fact, correspond with the truth.

The Mountain View firms apparently takes the issue very seriously, so much so that its own practice methods are deemed “extremely scientific and robust”, with a 95%+ confidence interval, a percentage found in medical testing. Its method is fairly simple: when analysts make a compensation suggestion, they do so “blindly”, without knowing the individual’s gender. The data they refer to is just “based on role, job level, job location as well as current and recent performance ratings”.

And, it appears, the system works, with data showing no significant difference between men and women’s compensations. And, were something unexpected to show up, Google is ready to tackle the issue. Reads the blogpost: “If individual employees are concerned, or think there are unique factors at play, or want a more individualized assessment, we dive deeper and make any appropriate corrections.”

This is certainly a topic of major concern for the firm, but its methodology seems sufficiently robust to answer any concern the OFCCP may have. “We hope to work with the OFCCP to resolve this issue, and to help in its mission to improve equal pay across federal contractors.  And we look forward to demonstrating the robustness of Google’s approach to equal pay,” the post concludes.