Recently, SAP announced that it will have achieved pay equality worldwide by early 2019. This is the result of a global internal pay equity review that started this past summer.
Using a statistical analysis, the company was able to determine that 99 percent of employees worldwide were paid equitably. The one percent of the workforce that showed a discrepancy was granted a salary increase, which took effect in October 2018.
SAP’s Cawa Younosi, head of Human Resources in Germany, spoke about the pay equity analysis, how the company lives its culture of equal pay, and how it works to create opportunities for women in a competitive industry: “Equal pay has been in focus for many years at SAP. That is why there are not many people affected by a pay gap.”
So, what is the key message regarding SAP’s equal pay strategy?
“We do not want a man to be paid less than another man or a woman,” says Younosi. “We have modified our internal processes and now have equal pay in the entire SAP organization.”
According to Younosi, salaries are continuously monitored: “Even though managers have a certain amount of discretion regarding salary distribution, equal pay works very well in our company.”
The background to this story starts 40 years ago, when SAP was founded. Younosi points out that “the gaps were very small, since we have been closely monitoring this topic since SAP was founded 40 years ago.” But, equal pay is not only about salary, it is also about opportunities.
Due to the smaller number of women who choose technical professions, men tend to be in the majority at companies like SAP. And getting those women into management positions is something that SAP takes very seriously.
“Thirty percent of employees at SAP are women. The percentage of women in management is currently 26 percent and by 2022 we want to reach 30 percent. We are working to recruit more women for our company. To support this, we have different development programs especially for women, advertise management positions for part time, and offer tandem models for management positions, as well.”
“We are doing everything we can to increase the number of women in our workforce,” concludes Younosi.
