Advancing Pay Equity, Social Justice, and Happiness at Work with Sally Loftis

This week on Happy at Work, Laura and Tessa sit down with Sally Loftis, founder of Loftis Partners and author of The Pay Equity Guide for Non-Profits. Sally shares insights from over 30 years working at the intersection of HR, organization development, and social justice.

Sally discusses the importance of considering the full ecosystem when addressing pay equity and how issues like flexible work, promotions, and cost of living are interconnected. 

Learn about Sally's practical approach to starting pay equity work through assessment and buy-in. Hear how she addresses resistance through curiosity and community. 

Most importantly, she encourages listeners to take that first step towards more just compensation. 

To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.

If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!

Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!

Transcript

Laura Hamill: 0:06

Welcome back for another episode of the happy at work podcast with Laura, Tessa and Michael.

Tessa Misiaszek: 0:13

Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.

Michael McCarthy: 0:22

Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show

Tessa Misiaszek: 0:37

Hey, hi and welcome to the happier work podcast. I am so excited to be joined by Sally Loftis, who is the founder of Loftis Partners and also the author of "The Pay Equity Guide For Non-Profits'. Welcome, Sally, to the podcast.

Sally Loftis: 0:56

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

Tessa Misiaszek: 0:58

Excellent. So Laura and I are so excited to talk to you because you've done incredible work related to a number of topics that we care about, including pay equity. But before we dive into that, let's let's first kind of back up and really we'd love to hear from you. What was your journey to get to where you are today, your education, your experience that really brought you to really caring about these important topics. Yeah,

Sally Loftis: 1:23

thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. Of course, I'm Sally Loftis, I use she her pronouns and I am my organization Loftus Partners is a human resources consulting firm, 100%, woman owned based up in the mountains of North Carolina, and we've started in 2020. And for my background, I have an undergrad degree in Human Resources, a master's degree in organization development, went through a certification program for nonprofit management. So my career has really been about human resources, right. And that's right at like thinking about are people happy at work, right, you know, thinking about that. And in my work now as kind of over the last almost 30 years, which I hate sayings, that makes me sound older than I feel. But it's true, is that really, I've always enjoyed working with people. And the great thing about human resources is that you're working with people on things that means so much to them, right? And you're able to step in and help at really critical moments, and we spend so much of our lives at work, it's great to be able to kind of work in as like an architect of those experiences. And so a lot of the work, you know, I've worked at corporations, small businesses, nonprofits, different things. But now the work that our firm is doing, as we talk about that we work at the intersection of human resources, organization development, social justice. And that's a lot of words. And I don't know what all fits in that Venn diagram. I know pay equity is in there about a lot of times we're going in and doing work with teams, culture, work, some of the human resources, stuff around like handbooks and compensation practices, and staffing practices, you know, things like that, we always try to have a very people positive approach, which is really centering the employee in our work. So I will stop there. On my introduction. That's

Laura Hamill: 3:15

awesome. I love that idea of the Venn diagram, right in thinking about how all those things come together. Well, let's talk about the thing that you did say was the kind of common thing for sure. Let's talk about your work on pay equity. Tell us a bit about how you approach that what kinds of maybe some examples of kinds of work projects or work you do in that space?

Sally Loftis: 3:36

Yeah, definitely pay equity is one of those words, phrases, that has really come to the forefront in the last five years. And which is funny, because the knees around pay equity have been around for 40 years, you know, but like kind of in the pandemic, all the things going on, really brought that conversation forward. So let me go ahead and define pay equity, I use it as an umbrella term, because you have things like pay equity, equal pay, pay, parity, pay, transparency, cost of living cost of labor, there are a lot of things that fall into that kind of pay equity umbrella in my book, I actually have that as an image of like a pig at a barbecue restaurant of the different pieces. Thanks to my niece for drawing that for me. But I mean it is there's just a lot of different parts that go into that. And I use the pig image because I always think of like saving, and like meeting money to live. So the pay equity work I do goes across the sciences, there's really in sometimes it's meeting organizations where they are so for instance, there's four phases of pay equity preparation, assessment, leadership buy in and implementation. In sometimes we start, you know, we start into just the preparation work, and we've got to kind of stop there and work on some stuff, like pay data, they don't have access to all the pay data or they don't have any employee feedback loops, things like that. So So there's a wide range of what I can do with an organization. But anywhere from kind of some of those smaller interventions to like you were asking for examples of like full on benchmarking salaries for everyone, recreating a compensation structure, maybe doing pay transparency, implementation, pay equity work takes longer than you may expect. So if somebody's like, we need to do this in three months, I'm like, Yeah, this is going to be 18 months. I hate to, you know, 12 to 18 months, if you want to do it well. So yeah, I mean, I can get more specific on those. But there's a really wide range of ways that we work with people across the pay pay equity spectrum. So

Tessa Misiaszek: 5:40

I, there's so many questions I want to ask you right now, I'll start with my first one only because I work at Korn Ferry Institute. I'm the head of research there. And we just conducted this past year a very large scale survey of women in really trying to understand how perimenopause and menopause impacts them at work. And what we found was quite shocking number of women who were either opting out of the workplace, because they felt crappy, a lot of them disproportionately Senior Executive Women, likely because they had the financial means to take time off. But also, it was just really interesting to see the impact it has on on their engagement work and productivity and time they were taking out of work because of that. And then we asked them about barriers to advancing their career and the offers a 60% said that they had, they had experienced a barrier such as getting paid less losing a bonus, not getting the promotion and so forth. I really attributed it, because of the way they were impacted by perimenopause and menopause. So, you know, suddenly, it's about support. It's about benefits. It's about flexible work arrangements. So I'm just curious, like, how do you look at intersections of those types of life transitions, or the, you know, kind of the experiences that people have, and what else companies can do to really provide that level of support to also address the pay equity, because I think for us, and in looking at this research, we were super, also were like, it kind of clicked in our head, we're like, well, one in four women are opting out of the workplace, when their senior executives that's gonna affect the statistics, right? So around pay when they're at their highest earning year during their highest earning years. So just curious to get your thoughts on that. I know, I just threw a doozy at you.

Sally Loftis: 7:37

I want to read the research. So send it to me, I would love to read all of that. Yeah, I think you bring up a great point. I mean, this is what I tell people a lot is that pay equity is like a tightly woven sweater, once you start pulling that key thread, stuff starts falling out. And like a term I've been using a lot lately has been like, think of like your workplace is like a rain forest. If something's happening, it's a living organism. Right. And if something's happening in part of the rainforest, it's going to impact the other parts. So if you've got pay issues, it's going to impact other parts in so there's not, you can't operate in a vacuum. And so to your point about the perimenopause stuff is that often I go into organizations and you know, we'll do like a pay equity assessment. And we'll start digging into some of the like, why is there an inequity? They're not judging? Just curious, you know, and we'll start digging into it. And a lot of times it is it's like flexible work schedules, it's the amount of paid time off people get it's a promotion process. That's not clear. It mean, like all these other things that are connected, that kind of started with pay. So to your point, yeah, I mean, it really, I think so often, we get caught up in making decisions in the moment and reactionary and kind of in a silo that we forget that there's a whole ecosystem that are operating, and that decision is going to impact a lot of other parts.

Laura Hamill: 9:03

It's really, that's really good. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on your philosophy or point of view on pay transparency, because, theoretically, I completely get, like how amazing it would be to have more transparency. But I also know practically, oh, my gosh, we've been doing this so long, we have all these special deals, and special packages, and really, you know, ways that we do some things that maybe the you know, by being transparent about them, it's gonna do what you just said, Right? Uncover all kinds of stuff, which doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. But curious about your philosophy on pay transparency.

Sally Loftis: 9:44

Oh, my goodness, we don't have enough time for this. But I will try to summarize it. Because I literally just had two meetings about this this morning. So I'm working with a client on building out a pay transparency training module for their staff, for their supervisors. And so yeah, I mean, I think, I think Patria Experience is another word that gets used a lot in place of some other things. So I think when people hear pay transparency, typically they hear it in a couple of ways. One is like it's a legal compliance issue. So a lot of states that have passed, right pay transparency laws, which I think will continue. And then there's this, this like level of transparency, where people want to know what everybody makes in the organization, which is not pay transparency. That's a different level of transparency. And so what I tell people is that I in one day, I'm going to create this, y'all it's like a gauge, like, you know, how much gas you have in the tank, right? Around pay transparency. There are a lot of different levels of pay transparency, there's the posting it on job descriptions, which is typically what the pay transparency laws are about. But there's also the work within your organization to say, have we had the conversations with our current employees before we go post this publicly? So they're not surprised? There's also you might I mean, I'm always surprised whenever there are I work with a client and a lot of their supervisors don't have access to pay data. So that's a level of pay transparency, right, and equipping supervisors to have pay conversations. That's another, you know, that's another and then I'm not of the 100, you know, kind of the range thing, the 100% transparency, for a couple of reasons. One is, I think, when everybody knows what everybody else makes, that could potentially put someone in danger of financial danger, like if you're in a domestic violence situation, or you know, I mean, something like that. So I think that concerns me on the 100%. The other piece is that I think when you're out 100% transparency, where everybody knows what everybody makes, there's a level of consent, and asking people to opt into that work, which can be done if you have a group of like five or 10. Right, but it like 5000, it's just not scalable. And do you give people an option for that not to be shared? And then what happens if people aren't sharing? And some people are sharing? I mean, like, there's just so that's why I'm probably like the 80% transparency pieces, but also recognizing there's a lot of different levels in transparency, besides just people knowing what each other makes. Yeah,

Laura Hamill: 12:11

I think that's so smart. And I love the idea of engage. And it's not yes or no, that is the extent to which and I think your point around, there are organizations that my mind kind of gets blown that many managers don't even know how much people on their team are making, right? And then they can't use that to help help them. Right. They can't, they don't have that information to be able to help their employees. So I really appreciate that the way you just described that. And I think that we just have to get much more smart about these nuances. Right? And not so yes or no that yeah, about things. So thank you so much. It was good down.

Tessa Misiaszek: 12:48

And no other kind of thread I want to pull on the sweater is you mentioned and I picked up on it. No judgment, just curious, right, like kind of going in, because this is such a hot topic. And I'm sure it's very emotionally charged. I'm sure there's lots of defensiveness around it. And I know that you're part of your methodology is that you use appreciative inquiry. And I'm just curious if you can maybe go a little bit into your kind of method and how you approach these conversations with curiosity versus to try to maybe diffuse a little of the natural defensiveness or other types of emotions that might come up? Because I think that's really important. quite

Sally Loftis: 13:31

insightful. Yes, absolutely. I certainly encounter resistance, kind of some of the ways I work with that. One is like, you know, maybe if I got brought in by the CEO, and maybe the CHRO, or whoever's in charge wasn't involved in that conversation that can sometimes be difficult. But yeah, I mean, a couple of things is I try to remind people, no one's compensation system is perfect. It just is. People who've been in those positions way longer than you've been at the organization. Those are decisions that were made while you weren't even there. You know, I mean, like mergers and acquisitions, I mean, just people reacting to the pandemic, in the last five years, there's been so much reactionary HR practices happening. So I try to tell people one is like, there's gonna be stuff in here, we're gonna have to figure out, it's fine. Like, it's okay, you're in a good group, you're in a safe space, we're going to talk about it. And then more is I try to help people also talk about like, a lot of this also has happened because of what's happening in society. So if you just see a list I use United States is, you know, the cost of living crisis. Typically, when we have these they don't last as long as they are now. And so and then we had a pandemic, which nobody had been through before, you know, and so there were all these different things happening. So a lot of people were just kind of playing Whack a Mole with hiring and retention, right and just trying to keep it blonde. So those are a couple of things I try to explain to people is like, everybody's in the same boat. You know, they're, it's okay. We're gonna get as far as we can, and sometimes you do have to kind of Stop and focus maybe on this one thing, maybe this one position or whatever. And then we just kind of get back to the greater work of doing that together. And I think there the other thing, and then I'll be quiet, we always told y'all we're gonna need more time. But I'm just gonna is that a lot of Oregon's I think every organization has got to go through some kind of like updating our assumptions work post pandemic, because the workplace has changed, and it's changed permanently. And it may change more. And so a lot of us are holding assumptions that we had in 2017 2018. I mean, a lot of the management practices we were teaching in 2019, don't even work now. Right? So there's a lot of internal assumptions work that needs to be done a lot of times that starts with the leadership, but it's also got to happen alongside with employees. Yeah,

Laura Hamill: 15:48

that's so good. And I think that's so generous, that you're thinking that management practices are from 2017, eight. Dry, you know, the 80s. But yeah, I'm with you on that. I love that approach. And I think that's got to help so much of your style and the way you frame that, to get people to feel like they can do it, right. And they're not being judged. And that's, you know, how you can get them to actually make change happen. So that's so cool. Tell us about your book. Tell us about, yeah, your book and why you wanted to write it. Thank

Sally Loftis: 16:22

you. I will say it just came out not long ago. And so I'm still kind of like, Oh, my goodness, I have a book like it's keep telling people it's like birth in a baby or like, Wait, it's here. You know, you're surprised by it. So thank you. Yeah, the pay equity guide for nonprofit organizations, I decided to write this book because I actually did my graduate research on pay inequities and nonprofits for my thesis was on that. And so I had already kind of had that basis. And I wanted to write something that I see a lot more. I work with all types of organizations, but I work with a lot of nonprofits. So I wanted to be able to put the work I'm doing into the hands of the nonprofits, because not all nonprofits can afford a consultant, right. And so there were just so few resources out there. So I want to be able to kind of put something very practical in the hands of people who wanted to do the work on their own, you know, and so there's a guide in the back for if you want to do the work, here's how you do it. You know, obviously, they're gonna have to have the time and you know, commitment to do that. But I wanted to get to get real practical, with people about this is kind of what it is. This is kind of, you know, where I come from when I'm salary benchmarking things to think about when you're communicating it here are things that, you know, leadership buy in, what does that look like? So, yeah, that's why I wanted to write it. And I wanted to write it specifically because like, my research was focused on frontline employees in rural nonprofits. And so I feel like so often these conversations happen with big groups in big cities. Yeah. And so I really wanted to have that representation out there as well, about that, it really isn't necessarily cheaper to live in a rural area, there are some, but you know, and just trying to kind of debunk some of those myths.

Tessa Misiaszek: 18:07

So I would love to talk a little bit about your work in the intersection of pay equity and social justice. So you know, and I think it's really interesting given that your book, and again, when we think about social justice, just as we think about pay equity or some of these issues, that it's in a certain context, it's Mark Urban, it's more a bigger company, and so forth. But kind of given your experience and background in a more working with more rural organizations that are geographically and more rural areas, and so forth. I just would love for you to tell us more about this intersection between social justice, pay equity and just how you've come to this work what you've seen in your experience.

Sally Loftis: 18:50

That's a great question. Yeah, I will say a couple of things. One is cost of living has been a real intersection of that, because a lot of organizations will use cost of labor, which is basically this is not the official definition. This is a Sally Loftus definition of like, how cheap can I get my labor in this market? Mean? That's really what you're looking at. And then cost of living. And there has been a growing gap between cost of living and cost of labor, and it's definitely exasperated in the last five years. So what I tell people like when I work with people around the social justice stuff, I'm like, Okay, well, let's think about why cost of living is so important. Student loan debt, rising housing costs, childcare, oh my gosh, I could just work on childcare, you know, elderly care, you know, I mean, the transportation going from remote back into the office. So that's kind of some of the stuff we talked about in the preparation pieces of it of like one is like how big is that gap in? Do you understand, for instance, like people do in D IB work? Do you understand that you might be limiting yourself out of the gate. by not paying, thriving wages, living wages, because they're typically what I found as an HR manager, is that before we did some of the pay equity work is that my best candidates were like college educated, whose family had paid for their education, and they had no dependents. And they had a partner who they could split the housing. That was like the, you know, well, FYI, that cuts out a lot of people. There are certain races and ethnicities. So that's kind of some of the social justice work. And then like, I will work with organizations to around like, do your people qualify for Medicaid, because you're not paying them enough. And so if you really want to do systemic D, I work, part of that is going to be the pay equity work, and really looking at how you're paying your employees and how you've structured that employee experience. Does that make sense? To answer a question that

Tessa Misiaszek: 20:56

is, that is so excellent, I couldn't agree with you more. And as someone who's actually worked, with big companies doing di work, I've primarily worked in the healthcare space, but very rarely do you hear pay, just pay in general, as part of the DI conversation, even if you're thinking about the different aspects of di from a systems level thinking you just very rarely you hear about pay from that perspective, and really closing that income disparity that exists? So really, super interesting. Thank you.

Sally Loftis: 21:29

You're welcome. And I will say, you know, if you want to keep going down the social justice path of like, if you get into, like, how do we reduce violence in this country and reduce crime? Part of it is living wages. Absolutely. So, you know, if you, you know, I think all these like corporations are putting money towards it. I'm like, Well, how about fixing that first, you know, within your organization, and then seeing what happens, and

Laura Hamill: 21:54

changing that mindset that you started the conversation with around just trying to get the cheapest labor that you possibly can. Right. Like that. Just that's, that's so ingrained, I think, in so many corporations and organizations have just that coming at it from that perspective. Sally, this has been so good. I feel like there's a million more things we can talk about. But our time is just about up. So could you just wrap us up with maybe some words of advice for people who care about this are some some lessons learned that you can share?

Sally Loftis: 22:25

Yeah, definitely, I will say, obviously, I would want you to buy the book, but also have a free pay equity collective website on my website, like it's where you just, it's free, you go in and sign up, you get resources that I talked about in the book, like a pay equity assessment that you can do on your own cost of living studies, stuff like that. So if you want more information, it's free. It's out there. So Loftus, partners.com. I think the other thing is that you're not in this by yourself. There are a lot of other people doing this work. And I have found that the clients who are most successful are the ones who are in community with other people doing the work, which is why I have the pay equity collective. And then the other thing is just start where the yes is sometimes it may just be because a lot of times you get into a pay equity assessment, and there's like, a lot of stuff. You're like, Oh, dear, you know, and you can get overwhelmed by the amount. Just start. Where do you have a yes, you know, where you have the money where you have the buy in things like that and start from there. Because if you don't start you'll never do it. Yeah. So I just encourage people start and go as far as you can and see what happens.

Laura Hamill: 23:31

Such good advice. Thank you so much, Sally. This has been so good. I just really appreciate you joining us today. Yeah,

Tessa Misiaszek: 23:39

and thank you. I mean, I I love, love, love your approach from coming from a place of curiosity. And I think addressing this issue in a way I haven't heard before. And I think you've been so thoughtful in the way that you're really thinking about how broad it is of an issue and how many so so many layers to the ecosystem that it can impact. So thank you so much, Sally, for joining us today.

Sally Loftis: 24:04

Thank you. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed our conversation.

Michael McCarthy: 24:09

We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the happy at work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts. Are

Tessa Misiaszek: 24:20

you interested in speaking on a future episode or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin at happy at work podcast.com And

Laura Hamill: 24:32

lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness. See you soon