The amendment to the Equal Pay for Men and Women Workers Law, according to which companies will be required to submit a wage gap report once a year, came into force and earlier this month companies with more than 500 employees were forced to publish their gender pay gaps.
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Yuval Rachlevsky, formerly in charge of wages In recent years, the Ministry of Finance and the Deputy Commissioner of the Civil Service have been advising companies on employment and wage agreements. “When the law was amended, I set up a company, in collaboration with the Philat and Zabiran payroll solutions diagnostic group, in order to deal with the amendment and help companies prepare the reports, work correctly and analyze the data,” he told Globes. The service, he emphasizes, does not end with the preparation of the report, and in the event that “if there is a distortion and discrimination, we will work with the companies to locate the distortion and influence its correction,” says Rachlevsky. “If, for example, we see in the group segmenting a gender pay gap, especially in the determining wage for calculating compensation, it means preachy and a red light comes on.”
One of the things that Rachlevsky says he saw in the reports is a gap that focuses on gross wages – which includes bonuses, overtime and everything that is calculated for income tax purposes. “There you see bigger gaps in favor of men. When surgeons see, for example, cases of night shifts that are more prominent in men. “More gaps. As a consulting company, we recommend keeping an eye out, going into history to understand what wages were absorbed by the workers and whether there are any influential bonuses or incentives.
“Companies are still waiting for the report to be submitted”
Rachlevsky says that in recent months, “we have been in contact with dozens of companies and entities, from non-profit organizations through business companies from all sectors.” He mentions that public companies and associations, which are required to report executive salaries, are required to publish without limiting the number of employees, even if their number is less than 518 – the limit from which private companies are required to report.
“The problem is usually with nonprofits,” says Rachlevsky. “They are not full of salaries, and are required to fill out the report. What’s more, when making comparisons by occupation, there is almost no one to compare. “518 to 200. I would set the same number for non-profit organizations.”
Have you come across companies that have tried to evade filling out the report?
“We were in contact with companies, with some only at the level of conversations. Some claimed that they did not know if the law applied to them. I also heard, not necessarily from those we worked with formally, that they would wait and sit on the fence until they saw the other companies’ first publications.
“For local authorities, we contacted the local government center to help the municipalities prepare the internal report, because they were exempted from external publication – something that is done for them by the wage commissioner. “And this part will take a long time. For private and public companies, even if they have not filled it out, the process will happen. Some companies have not yet submitted the report.”
As part of the amendment to the Equal Pay for Men and Women Workers Law, the reporting companies were given freedom of action in the way it was prepared, especially with regard to the segmentation of facts and workers into comparison groups. As part of the report, the companies were asked to update all employees on the wage difference in the reference group, along with a public report showing the number of groups and the differences in each group, but without specifying the group name. That is, what occupation, rank, or any other criterion by which it was determined.
The companies stated, even if in general at the beginning of the report, what consideration led them to the division. In the banking sector, for example, in Discount, the facts were divided into 61 groups, in Bank Hapoalim into 21, in International – 14, in Leumi – 11 and in Mizrahi Tefahot – only seven groups. Another company from another field that stood out in a large number of groups is Elbit Systems, which split into 86 reference groups.
On the claim that by segmenting the groups and their numbers, it is possible to “play” with the data, says Rachlevsky that “the definitions and segments are not clear even from an internal perspective. It is not clear who to compare and how to segment. It is clear that companies want, Of attorneys or VPs of finance and human resources try to hide less good results. They understand that this is an opportunity to examine what is happening in the company, and in the end they will have to deal with it. “
Did you get the impression that companies were surprised by the results when they discovered gaps?
“Yes, there were companies that were surprised and did not understand how the result was obtained. When they went inside, we saw the explanation, alongside situations that remained unclear. In these cases the companies took it upon themselves to check that they understood that at the corporate governance level they would have to deal with it.”
Regarding creditor legislationA., Rachlevsky adds that he believes it will lead to change. “We will not see it in a year or two, but the trend is clear – companies will be more aware of these issues. Even when they absorb – they will have to think about gaps, if any, in job offers. Another thing – companies promote incentives every year. If according to employment agreements “Or at a differential level in the individual contracts – they will have to look at how to divide the funds through gender analysis.”
“There are gaps left in traditional industries”
On the vast majority of cases where wage disparities have been discovered in favor of men, Rachlevsky says that “the older generation remembers the perception that the man is the main breadwinner, and it was the one that caused the gap. .
Did you notice a difference between industries in the way the report was prepared or in the results?
“At the level of generalization – in high-tech companies, equality is higher, and there is more adherence to performance and capabilities. This is true in perception, and also in abilities to deal with the issue. “From the blue-collar job, it is based on roles that were known as male, in which the salary levels were higher. What’s more, their salaries are on an hourly basis. There they will have to exercise more orderly thinking.”
Did your company have a recommendation regarding the number of groups, for uniformity?
“Our recommendation was that in companies with between 500 and 1,000 employees, the range should be around 10 groups. It can also be divided into 80 groups, and I read that some did it. But even large companies with thousands of employees, eventually went down to rational numbers. It’s more if at the level of occupations, they took the right groups. “
ID: Yuval Rachlevsky
personal: 71 years old, married. Father of three and grandfather of seven
professional: One of the founders of the Israeli Salary Center in collaboration with Tzviran and Philat, and the owner of an economic consulting company. In the past, he served as Commissioner of Wages in the Treasury and as Acting Commissioner of the Civil Service
Something else: A lover of swimming, thrillers and history