This session will highlight the dramatic ricochet effect of the new proactive pay equity regime on everything you do – from the way you identify job classes and value work, to the way you calculate total compensation and select your job evaluation methodology, to the way you approach collective bargaining and more.

It will include

• Fundamental changes in the way you approach compensation issues
• The need to see the big picture to understand how to perform every step in the pay equity process
• Impact on employer obligation to produce and posti a pay equity plan
• The information that must be included and the information that must be shared in the design and creation of the plan
• The challenges ahead
• Impact on how employers and unions will negotiate in this new space

This session will provide you with a deep and fundamental understanding of the new philosophy, principles and foundations that underpin the federal Pay Equity Act which will bolster your ability to implement.

• What the Pay Equity Act attempts to achieve, over and above Human Rights Code Compliance
• Why the move to proactive pay equity?
• What has changed?
• New philosophy
• Historical developments crucial to your basic understanding of the new regime
• The pay equity exercise: Who and what is involved?
• Deadlines and considerations for developing a plan to meet statutory obligations
• The thorny question of determining who is an employee
• When are you part of a “group of employers”?
• Establishing committees and determining who can be on a committee
• Key considerations in planning and analyzing compliance with the Pay Equity Act.

You only get one chance to make your case and the recent denial of Treasury Board Secretariat’s application Commission for authorization to have more than one pay equity plan  underscores the fact that this will be an uphill battle. Reasons why Treasury Board’s application and other submissions have been denied

• Lessons learned
• Arguments that failed and why
• What might work?

Job classes are a critically important foundation in pay equity and job evaluation and should be considered a strategic decision as the structure of job classes will drive the size and complexity of implementation as well as potential financial outcomes.

• Choosing your method
• How big or small should your classes be?
• Job class design
• Group level – the need for agreement
• Simplifying a complex process
• Job descriptions, job titles and generic profiles

While pay inequity is a persistent phenomenon, gender dynamics in the labour market are evolving and changing, albeit slowly. In addition to examining trends in the wages of female and male workers, a focus on pay equity requires identifying which jobs are predominantly female and which jobs are predominantly male. This session will provide information on the following aspects:

• Gender wage gap in Canada: methodologies, data sources, historical and recent trends based on Statistics Canada data
• The changing labour market from a gender perspective: key changes in the occupational profile of female and male workers
• Accessing statistical information on employment and gender from Statistics Canada.

• What must be included?
• What can be excluded?
• Unique considerations for public and private sectors and family owned business