In a very topical application of data analytics, US employment leader Littler has announced the launch of the Littler Pay Equity Assessment, which combines the 1300+ lawyer firm’s experience in employment law and compensation with proprietary technology to identify pay gaps and, ergo, risks of litigation. The tool comes as it emerges that Dr. Zev Eigen, Littler’s former global director of data analytics, has just left the firm for people analytics startup Syndio, which he co-founded in January 2016.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women are still paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to men, and the gap is even greater for African American and Hispanic women. As concerns about pay inequality continue to intensify – bringing new legal and reputational risks for employers – Littler’s platform provides a means of identifying pay disparities for people performing similar work under similar circumstances and proactively fixing them using tested legal strategies. Organisations can access the results of the assessment in a user-friendly dashboard that provides deep and concise examinations of compensation data in a privileged context.
“Having been at the forefront of every development in labor and employment law for the last 75 years, expanding our data-driven approach to address the complicated and important issue of pay equity was a natural evolution,” said Tom Bender and Jeremy Roth, co-managing directors of Littler, in a joint statement. “Not only does this new resource deepen our data analytics capabilities, it expands our commitment to improving diversity and equality in the workplace. By combining innovative technology with our deep experience counseling employers, we can help clients uncover issues they might not have known about and identify causes and possible solutions.”
The Littler Pay Equity Assessment measures compensation differences between demographic groups, identifies those that are statistically significant, and determines the extent to which these differences reflect legitimate business considerations. In a privileged context, Littler can also assist employers with crucial steps for a defensible audit and create a record of the criteria that drives a company’s compensation system and legitimate distinctions among employees that explain any disparities. This information helps human resources departments respond to questions from employees and creates an evidentiary record in the event of future litigation.
As we reported in January, Littler this year expanded its data analytics capabilities with the re-hire of Text IQ’s general counsel and VP of strategy, Aaron Crews, as its first chief data analytics officer. Based in the Sacramento office, Crews was brought in to work closely with Eigen and Littler’s extensive team of data analysts. However, a spokesperson for Littler confirmed that Eigen has in the last couple of weeks left Littler for Syndio, where his title is chief science officer.
