Matrix > Toolkit: Pay and Conditions > Not Enough Data?
Not Enough Data?
It is important not to be hamstrung by worries that your organisation does not have good enough data coverage or enough Māori or Pasifika staff for public reporting. It is still possible and important to analyse what you have, and learn more about employee experiences, in order to understand inequities in your workplace. Click here for Doing Data Right, the Toolkit’s landing page for all data advice.
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What if I don't have good data coverage?
GEM encourages employers to analyse what they have, even if it is imperfect, under the proviso that data capture will need to improve and supplemented by qualitative organisational knowledge about what types of employees are ‘missing’ from the ethnic data capture.
In the public sector, less than 75% coverage is considered ‘poor quality’ data, but this level of data coverage is considered a difficult target by many private organisations. Even if a organisation has below 75% coverage, they should not be discouraged from looking at their data and learning from what it says. Gathering qualitative data by talking and listening to employees is just as important for equity planning.
Read more here on barriers to and enablers of good data coverage.
What if I don't have enough Māori or Pasifika employees for public reporting?
When an organisation has small numbers of Māori and Pasifika staff, publicly reporting pay gaps can be too disclosive of people’s confidential pay details. Kia Toipoto guidance recommends a minimum of 20 staff of each ethnic group for public reporting to protect individual privacy.
However, pay gaps for workplaces with fewer than 20 Māori or 20 Pasifika staff can and should still be analysed internally under secure conditions as part of confidential People and Culture reviews. Pay gaps for small numbers of Māori and Pasifika staff can be analysed and taken into consideration in recruitment policy, planning and pay setting, even if not reported internally or externally. GEM recommends that any review processes based on confidential internal pay gap data analysis involve union representation and input under secure and confidential conditions.
Useful ways of thinking about your organisation's pay gap, whether or not there are more or fewer than 20 staff of any given minority
‘Does it seem like a lot?’ ‘Is it a substantive gap?’ i.e. Is it a meaningful difference in average pay?
Would the picture be easily flipped by a few hiring fluctuations given small numbers? How likely or how easily would it be for an organisation to flip the picture given what they know about hiring patterns?
Do gaps reflect clustering of Māori or Pasifika staff at lower levels, even when numbers are small? This is vertical segregation that needs to be fixed by better progression and more diverse recruitment at higher levels.
Are people at the same tier being paid differently? This is a horizontal pay gap. Do there need to be pay adjustments and promotions to rectify clear inequities?