Latest / Best of Business / Nicola Grigg: Minister for Women on the Government's new online tool designed to drive down the gender pay gap

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Nicola Grigg: Minister for Women on the Government's new online tool designed to drive down the gender pay gap · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
• 0:12
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  Speaker 2: Now. As it was telling you earlier, the government has
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  Speaker 2: launched a calculator to help businesses work out their gender
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  Speaker 2: pay gap now. The calculator can be found on the
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  Speaker 2: Ministry for Women's website in the hope that businesses will
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  Speaker 2: realize what the pay gap is and then address the
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  Speaker 2: pay gap. And Nikola greg is the Minister for Women.
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  Speaker 3: Hen Nikoler, Hello, how about you good?
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  Speaker 2: Did you hear my rant at five twenty five?
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  Speaker 3: I did thoughts well, Look, I mean I took matunity leaves.
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  Speaker 3: It's up the women individually. Look, I speak to lots
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  Speaker 3: and lots of women lead to businesses. I was with
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of lawyers recently. Some of them told me
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  Speaker 3: they went back to work after six weeks. So look,
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  Speaker 3: I don't respectfully here that I don't necessarily agree with you.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's up to the individual and all power
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  Speaker 3: to course back to work and equally to both want
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  Speaker 3: to be much.
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  Speaker 2: I not totally. Everybody can decide, but you don't get
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  Speaker 2: everything right. So if you want to take a year's
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  Speaker 2: and you'll leave every time you have a bad baby,
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  Speaker 2: you want to be the one that stays home with
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  Speaker 2: the baby. You want to be the primary parent. Don't
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  Speaker 2: don't bitch and moan when you're not getting paid the
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  Speaker 2: same as your male peers. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know what, you're touched on a really
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  Speaker 3: salient point here, because we've got a pay gap is
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  Speaker 3: about eight point two percent. We've driven that down quite
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  Speaker 3: hard in recent years, and now it's got really sticky,
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  Speaker 3: and that's because of what we call it unconscious biases,
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  Speaker 3: and a lot of that is driven by women who
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  Speaker 3: choose to exit the workforce to stay home and be months.
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  Speaker 3: And again that's awesome and I love that they want
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  Speaker 3: to do that. But this is why we have to
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  Speaker 3: start encouraging businesses to really open up, get really brave,
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  Speaker 3: measure their pay gap, and then if they want to
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  Speaker 3: take action to start to reduce it.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Now, what I'm worried about this thing doing right
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  Speaker 2: is that there will be unintended consequences. So there will
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  Speaker 2: be a lot of businesses where, for example, they have
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  Speaker 2: a lot perhaps they employ majority women, like thirty percent
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  Speaker 2: blokes seventy percent women, and maybe at the top levels
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  Speaker 2: of the business and I'm thinking about someone in particular
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  Speaker 2: at the top levels of the business is pretty even
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  Speaker 2: fifty to fifty. But then they've got the gigantic workforce
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  Speaker 2: underneath the women, right, so they're cheap women working there.
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  Speaker 2: What they will do, Nikola, is they will not pay
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  Speaker 2: those women more. They will simply next time a woman leaves,
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  Speaker 2: replace it with a man. Replace it with a man,
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  Speaker 2: Replace it with a man, replace it with man. And
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  Speaker 2: the unintended consequence is that for some women in certain
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  Speaker 2: pay bands, it gets hard to get a job.
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  Speaker 1: You.
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  Speaker 3: Look, I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't think
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  Speaker 3: businesses will do that. I mean, we've road tested this
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  Speaker 3: thing really really widely with all sorts of businesses, including
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  Speaker 3: those gender heavy ones that you're talking about, but probably
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  Speaker 3: the inverse of that, like Port of Auckland, like various
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  Speaker 3: contracting and constructing companies. So look, they're obviously really keen
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  Speaker 3: to delve into this because we know that it will
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  Speaker 3: open up a workforce to them that will unleash a
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  Speaker 3: wider talent pulled to them. You know, we know that
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  Speaker 3: employing more women is all around diverse thing. Canigrater and
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  Speaker 3: invasion and decision making, all that kind of thing. So
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  Speaker 3: I don't necessarily think this is going to drive people
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  Speaker 3: away from employing women in say, I think they're going
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  Speaker 3: to see the power of it and it's going to
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  Speaker 3: unleas something quite cool.
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  Speaker 2: This particular tool. Is it completely private, like I can
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  Speaker 2: go on if I wanted to type in my business
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  Speaker 2: and all the details and nobody would even know that
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  Speaker 2: I've done it. I don't need to display it.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, absolutely, And each business can choose to do
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  Speaker 3: the whole organization or to your point earlier, they can
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  Speaker 3: drill down by sector, so you can can drill down
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  Speaker 3: any management, mid level management, and so on and so forth,
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  Speaker 3: so you can equate. You can calculate out your gender
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  Speaker 3: pay within each of those segments within your business.
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  Speaker 2: And then what is the possible advice that can be
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  Speaker 2: given to businesses to address it? Is it not simply
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  Speaker 2: paid that woman more?
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  Speaker 3: No, it's really really user friendly. I've run through it
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  Speaker 3: a couple of times myself. It's going to be hosted
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  Speaker 3: on the Ministry for Women's website and business in there,
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  Speaker 3: so we're going to get it out as wide as
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  Speaker 3: we can possibly go and all of so A is
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  Speaker 3: the calculator, but then there are a whole heap of
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  Speaker 3: guides that you can then download to help you address
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  Speaker 3: that pay gap, and that they have been informed by
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  Speaker 3: international best practice. But also, I think more importantly New
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  Speaker 3: Zealand business. We want to create something that is designed
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  Speaker 3: by business for business to the unique New Zealand environment,
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  Speaker 3: so therefore you know it's applicable to them and their
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  Speaker 3: context to operate in.
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  Speaker 2: Nicola, thank you very much for taking the time to
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  Speaker 2: talk to us. It's Nicola Gregg, the Minister for Women.
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