Guide

Pay Equity Audit Template

A pay equity audit is the highest-stakes analysis a DEI practitioner touches, because what it finds can be discoverable. The structure below is about doing it in the right order, with legal involved from the start, so a genuine finding leads to a remedy rather than to a problem nobody can now unsee and nobody has planned for.

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Everything on this page is yours to copy and adapt. The courses cover the decisions behind it: what to charge, what to promise, and what to put in writing.

What yours needs to cover

✓ A scoping section defining which roles are comparable and why
✓ The factors you will control for, agreed and written down before the analysis runs
✓ A note on legal privilege and who commissions the work, decided at the start
✓ The analysis itself, run by someone competent with the data
✓ A remediation plan with a budget and a timeline
✓ A communications plan for what will be said, to whom, and when

How to use it

Involve legal counsel before any analysis begins, not after a gap is found.
Agree the comparable-role groupings in advance, because they decide the result.
Write down the legitimate factors you are controlling for before you see the output.
Budget for remediation before you run the analysis, so a finding is not stranded.
Plan what you will say if the answer is uncomfortable, and say it.

Pay Equity Audit Template FAQs

What is a pay equity audit?

A structured comparison of pay for comparable work, controlling for factors you have agreed are legitimate, to find differences those factors do not explain. It is a different exercise from a published pay gap figure, which compares averages across a whole workforce.

Do we need legal involved?

Yes, and from the beginning. Rules on what may be analysed, what must be reported and what is privileged vary widely by jurisdiction, and this page is not legal advice. Unit 5 covers how to work with counsel on it.

What if we find a gap we cannot afford to fix at once?

Plan a phased remediation with dates and a budget rather than doing nothing. A documented plan being followed is a very different position from a finding that was filed away.

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