Understand Pay Transparency and Your Rights as a Job Seeker
Episode 462 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Louise Myrland
What do Colorado’s pioneering pay transparency laws mean for your job search?
Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, which recognizes the day of the year when the average black woman in America has finally earned the same annual salary that the average white man took home last year. It paints an alarming picture.
Throughout the country, various initiatives are being developed to help shrink this and other pay gaps, and the efforts are working—albeit slowly on the national level. I’m a proud Coloradan for a lot of reasons, but our trailblazing Equal Pay for Equal Work Act is way up there on my list. In recognition of this important day and the inspiring legislative efforts led by Colorado in recent years, I’m so pleased to share my conversation with Louise Myrland, the VP of Programs for the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.
Louise leads the organization’s research, public policy, grantmaking, and education and engagement efforts, which together support a shift toward economic security for the 2.8 million women living in Colorado. Louise is the perfect spokesperson for this topic and has so many insights to share.
What is the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act?
The statewide legislation—the first of its kind passed in the U.S.—went into effect in 2021. This robust law demands and protects pay transparency and prohibits employers from paying people differently for doing the same work on the basis of identity, such as age, race, or gender.
The pay transparency component of this law has expanded across much of the country. Louise explains that while salary ranges appeared on minimal job postings years ago, today, one-quarter of workers in the nation can utilize this intel to make more strategic, informed decisions about the future of their careers.
What rights does this law grant workers?
The best-known component of the law is the requirement that companies share a clear salary range and benefits on every job posting open to Colorado applicants. In addition, the employer must indicate the deadline for applying, which goes a long way to helping job seekers prioritize the application process.
But the law goes further than this. It provides additional transparency to existing employees, who must be notified whenever their company has a vacant position that needs to be filled. They, like external job seekers, must be made aware of the salary range and benefits so that they have an equal opportunity to pursue new roles within their organizations.
Another hugely impactful layer of this act is the prohibition against asking interviewees to disclose their previous salaries. In the past, this common interview technique meant job seekers—particularly women and BIPOC people—could fall into a self-perpetuating trap of consistent low-ball offers. They would share their previous wage and, rather than the new company offering a salary contingent on market rate and their existing budget, the new hire would simply be offered an amount comparable to their previous pay, perpetuating the trend of underpaying women and marginalized workers. This cycle can follow a person from job to job, leaving them in a perpetual state of under compensation.
I was delighted to discover from Lousie that even workers seeking remote jobs with employers outside of Colorado are covered by these laws. If a job is open to residents for any state with these laws, the posting and interview process must abide by these rules!
Who is responsible for making sure employers follow the rules?
I get a certain amount of joy from being a pay transparency vigilante and reporting Colorado businesses that aren’t disclosing salary ranges on their job postings. These complaints (which anyone can file here) go to the CDLE—Colorado Department of Labor and Employment—and Louise applauds their dedication not only to implementing and enforcing these burgeoning laws but also to educating companies, many of whom want to be in compliance.
It makes sense for organizations to be as onboard as job seekers since the data strongly support the benefits of the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act for everyone involved. In my interview with Zoë Cullen, Are Pay Transparency Laws Working?, we discussed many employer benefits, including decreased “time to hire.”. When workers apply only for positions that match their expected pay, countless hours and efforts, on the part of both interviewer and interviewee, are no longer wasted.
Other statistics are just as promising. A report released by the Women’s Foundation of Colorado in 2023 showed that since the Act went into effect in 2021, women in Colorado are earning an average of almost $3,000 more each year. That this is occurring while men’s salaries are holding steady (or increasing with inflation) tells us these policies are doing what they set out to do: foster pay equity, not raise women’s wages to the detriment of men.
I’m a data nerd, so we’ll look at a few more numbers before we go. The report Louise helped deliver indicates that this progress also applies to Washington and California, where similar laws are in place. All three states exceed the national average pace of closing the gender wage gap, which has closed by only 2 cents over the past three years: WA and CA have managed to speed that closure up to close the gap by 5 and 3 cents, respectively, while Colorado gets true bragging rights at closing the gender wage gap by 7 cents during this same time period!
In this episode, Louise shares some touching stories of women positively affected by the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. I would love for you to share your own stories of changes you’ve experienced from these or similar laws; you can email me at emilie@bossedup.org. Let’s get the word out to keep our country’s pay transparency and equal pay initiatives coming.
Related Links from today’s episode:
Learn more about The Women’s Foundation of Colorado and access many helpful resources
Explore Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act
The Women’s Foundation of Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work 2023 report
Learn more about Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment
Press release for Equal Pay Day News
Download the Bossed Up Negotiation Guide for job seekers
Listen to episode 444, Are Pay Transparency Laws Working?
HIRED: my Job Search Accelerator
Find forms for reporting employers on equal pay rights and more here
LEARN MORE ABOUT NAVIGATING
THE MODERN JOB SEARCH LIKE A BOSS:
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EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 462. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today we are talking all about knowing your rights as a job seeker,
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particularly in light of Colorado's transformational law, the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. Now, the good news is, even if you don't live in Colorado, there's a lot of similar legislation passing in dozens of other states now and many more municipalities. So it's so important that you understand your rights as a job seeker or even someone who's just looking for a promotion at work when it comes to how you can leverage pay transparency to make sure you're not underpaid chronically and make sure you're not getting the short end of the stick.
Today, July 9, 2024, is this year's Black Women's Equal Payday. Today's the day that represents how much more work black women must do all the way from January 1 to July 9 of 2024 to earn the same amount as men took home by the end of 2023, on average. So the average man's earnings from 2023, it took this many months, over seven months, for the average black woman in America to earn that same amount. So today, more than any other day, is a good day for us to acknowledge not only what individual women can do to help change this, to make sure we're not being underpaid, to negotiate more, and to do all those things that we know we need to do, but what systemic solutions exist? Like passing laws that make it illegal to pay people disproportionately based on their identity, things like gender, age, race, et cetera.
Joining me to break all of this down and help us really understand and know our rights as job seekers, as workers in the open labor market is Louise Myrland, the Vice President of Programs for the Women's Foundation of Colorado. Louise leads research, public policy, grant making, and statewide community education, and engagement efforts to accelerate progress towards economic security for the 2.8 million Colorado women and their families.
Her career, dedicated to advancing social justice through education, began in science education outreach, which you'll hear more about in this interview. And prior to joining the Women's Foundation of Colorado in 2014, Louise helped build the Denver Scholarship Foundation, from its founding, she designed, led and evaluated the organization's college access, affordability and success programs that propelled over 4000 Denver Public schools school graduates to pursue higher education in Colorado. She earned her master's of public administration from the University of Colorado Denver and her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the Ohio State University. Louise, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
LOUISE: Thanks so much for having me, Emilie. It's a thrill to be here.
EMILIE: Well, I'm so excited. I feel like this is my chance to share a local gem here in Colorado with the rest of the Bossed Up community, because the work that you do at the Women's Foundation of Colorado is just so impressive and so admirable and just groundbreaking on so many fronts. I'm excited to dive in to the topic of our Equal Pay For Equal Work Act in particular, but tell me a little bit about you and your role and how you got to where you are today.
LOUISE: Emilie, thanks so much for the chance to be here to share more about the equal pay laws. It's one of my favorite things because, really, my whole career has been dedicated to advancing equity and justice.
Once upon a time, I was a chemist, and that wasn't people oriented enough for me. So I got out of the lab and started working in educational equity at the Ohio State University and have been in Colorado now for, gosh, nearly 20 years. And all the while have been focused on the part that I can play to support great organizations and people who are working to make our communities more fair and inclusive and just. And I'm so lucky to do this work and to do so with great partners like you.
EMILIE: I love it. Chemist to policymaker and advocate. I just, I love a good career transition story here at Bossed Up, too, because that's always inspiring to women who are feeling like they want to make a pivot. So call Louise if that sounds like you.
Today we're going to focus on equal pay for equal work. We know Colorado has been leading the way nationally on passing pay transparency laws. We were the first in the nation to do so. Was it in 2019 that it originally got over the finish line?
LOUISE: Yes, in 2019, the culmination of decades of work with tremendous partners really leading this way. The Colorado Women's Bar Association, 95 Colorado Women's Foundations, and courageous legislative champions. We passed the best Equal Pay For Equal Work Act in the nation. It both prohibits paying people differently when they're doing the same work, and it requires and protects more transparency about pay. And the combination of the two is really making a huge difference for pay equity in our state.
EMILIE: That is so amazing. And I know shortly after we passed our law, similar laws passed on the statewide level in New York, in California, how many other states and maybe even municipalities have passed similar laws at this point, do you know?
LOUISE: My goodness, it's hard to keep count, but we're seeing good things happening in the states and localities that have followed Colorado's lead and where once upon a time, very few job postings included details about pay and benefits. Now, a quarter of our nation's workers are covered by pay transparency laws and have access to more of the information they need to make the career decisions that are best for them.
EMILIE: That is so exciting. And it's interesting, right? Because some places can pass salary transparency laws separate and apart from the equal pay aspect, like gender and racial wage gaps component, our equal pay act, equal pay for equal work. Our laws on the books have combined them both, right? Like looking internally to make sure that you're not paying people differently who are doing similar work based on gender or race alone or any other identity aspects. Right? And encouraging salary transparency, pay transparency to help prevent that from happening moving forward. Is that, has that been a model that's been adopted elsewhere? That combination?
LOUISE: Other laws have been passed in part or in whole, modeled off of Colorado's example. In states where they may have had the pay equity requirements on the books, they've added pay transparency. We've seen that in California. And similar to Colorado's progress, California is making faster progress to close the gender pay gap since a transparency component was added.
EMILIE: That's exciting. I love that. So what does this mean for job seekers now? You know, what should job seekers in Colorado know when it comes to their rights? When navigating everything from just, like, looking at and applying for open positions all the way to being in the workplace and wondering if they're getting paid fairly.
LOUISE: There are so many great protections and better opportunities for job seekers and workers in our state that come with this law. First is that when employers are seeking to hire, they have to be transparent about the pay and benefits in job postings. And employers have to be transparent with their employees when they have a job opportunity to be filled. So no longer is it a quiet tap on the shoulder for that one guy they have in mind for an advancement opportunity. But all employees know when there's a vacancy to be filled, and they can determine for themselves whether they want to go for it or not.
And in Colorado, employers cannot ask job seekers their past pay. And so, a woman who is underpaid in one of her first jobs is no longer doomed to lower pay than she deserves for the whole of her career. Before, employers were prohibited from asking about pay history. Low pay in one job could follow you for your entire working life. Now, employers cannot ask what you used to be paid to determine what you will be paid. Instead, pay is based on the value of the work and the role.
EMILIE: I love that. And that should be determined by the employer first, right. They have to budget for a position when they are ready to hire. I've been saying this to my job search clients for years, even when we don't have legal protections, to essentially refuse to answer the salary history question, because it dooms women and marginalized people in particular to sort of replicating past inequities for the remainder of our career.
In fact, Jenny, one of my job search clients, was just sharing a story how, she's up for a very senior level role position at a non-profit, I think it's in DC. And they sent her a little sheet after she, I think, went through two rounds of interviews, and they were very excited to move forward with her. They just sent her a little one pager and said, fill this out so we can move into the next round. And the one pager said, what have you made at all your past positions? And that put Jenny in this impossible position. First of all, Irene, my programs manager, and I were feverishly googling the salary transparency laws in DC. And the implementation of enforcing their laws was like one month later than she had been asked to give this information. And she felt like she was in an impossible position, you know, being forced to disclose because, you know, she didn't want to give the impression that they could never afford her. But she's also had a very variable pay over the years.
So, you're telling me that when an employer asks you what you made in the past here in Colorado, we can now say that's not legal, basically, or how does someone. How does someone respond if it does happen? Because I know it's still happening. You know, like, and we can give employers the benefit of the doubt and say, maybe they don't know, but what should the job seeker do when they're faced with that conundrum, because they're trying really hard to be agreeable and show that they're a team player without screwing themselves financially?
LOUISE: Right. Well, let's keep giving employers the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that the pay range was included in the posting for the job that applicant is interviewing for. And when asked, what have you been paid previously? I think it's a great opportunity to pivot to, I see that the pay for this position is stated as, you know, from A to B in this range. I fully expect to be paid near the higher end of that range based on my experience and the value that I would bring to you in these ways. It's another opportunity to make the case for the value the applicant brings to the table in this position and keeping the focus there.
EMILIE: I love that. I'll drop some links in today's show notes, too, to our Hired job search resources and the Negotiation Guide that we have, which is a free resource where it's like, how to navigate that pivot with grace like you just did. It certainly helps to have legal protections behind us, but it does make me wonder about enforcement. You know, when job seekers here in Colorado see a job posted without that salary range, what are our avenues for helping enforce that law and or who's policing this system for us?
LOUISE: Colorado's Department of Labor and Employment has been a tremendous resource for both the implementation and enforcement side of this, but really for employer education as well. And when folks see a job posting without the required information, a description of pay and benefits, when the application is due, the details about how to apply, there is a complaint form that folks can file on CDLE's website. I'll make sure you have that link to share with your listeners. And when CDLE receives those complaints, they can follow up with the employer to make sure that they understand their responsibilities to be more transparent.
And when a job seeker is looking at that posting, they can certainly follow up with the employer to request the information directly and reference the educational materials from the Women's Foundation of Colorado, from the Department of Labor and Employment, making it very clear to employers that they are required to provide this information.
EMILIE: And if an employer does not come into compliance, are there any penalties?
LOUISE: The Department of Labor and Employment is authorized to enforce with fines ranging from $500 to $10,000 per violation. So employers certainly have a very good reason to comply, not only because it is the law, but also there are benefits employers enjoy when they're more transparent about the pay and benefits available for the job opportunities they're seeking to fill.
One that I hear the most from employers is that the applicants they are receiving are a better match for the role because they understand what the pay range is. Folks who are ready to come work in that role, within that pay range, are the ones who are applying. And so nobody's wasting time or heartache with a mismatch from the beginning, without realizing it, we all benefit from this pay transparency.
EMILIE: Totally. And I recently interviewed Harvard Business School professor Zoë Cullen on this very podcast, and she spoke about the global research she's done in different countries all across the world and looked at different kinds of pay transparency laws. And there were clear deliverables for both employees and employers. There were clear benefits to both parties that she enumerated in our interview, too, that I'll link to.
So I think that's a really important point. It's like none of us want to be wasting our time here. You know, HR and recruiters and talent acquisition professionals have better things to do then follow a lead that's going to lead to nowhere. So salary transparency takes that off the equation or out of the equation and really helps reduce time to hire, which I think is so important.
As a little side note, I do love being a little vigilante justice warrior when it comes to reporting Colorado employers who are violating this law. In fact, for folks who haven't already heard on our Take action page at bosssedup.org/takeaction. We have those forms directly linked for both California, New York, and Colorado. And I've reported quite a few employers over the years. And I'll tell you what, I'm like the biggest fan of CDLE, Colorado's Department of Labor and Employment. They get back to you. They will email you back. They will keep you updated. They will follow through in making those changes. And I’ve seen job postings turn around. I've seen them having been added to with pay transparency, as they should. And I've also seen the numbers of fines that we've collected as a state as a result of violators.
So I'm just like a huge fan of that vigilante element of this because we have laws on the books. Thanks to folks like you who are advocating for us. Let's enforce them together.
LOUISE: We want as many employers as possible to understand their responsibilities, to be aware of them and to take action to comply. We're all going to benefit from more information, more transparency, and thanks for helping to get the word out about Colorado's Equal Pay For Equal Work Act.
EMILIE: Well, I'm obsessed, so it's easy. It's easy to do. One question that comes up often from job seekers here is, what if I'm applying for remote positions that, let's say, are headquartered elsewhere? So I'm based in Denver. I look at a job that's a fully remote position, and the company's based in Tennessee, somewhere that doesn't have pay transparency laws on the books. Do they still have to comply? And what are my rights in that instance?
LOUISE: So Colorado's equal pay law applies to all employers in Colorado. That means if you have one employee in Colorado, all of the transparency requirements apply. If an employer is operating completely outside of the state, of Colorado and has no employees here. And they are hiring for a position that's going to be performed in Tennessee, no, they don't have to include information, but job postings that are open to Colorado workers, including those remote positions, they should include the description of pay and benefits. And all employers who are posting for jobs nationwide will experience a benefit from being more transparent, whether they are required by law in their state or not to do so, whether they are hiring for in person or remote positions. Employers and job seekers all see these benefits.
And really, employers who aren't including pay information and job postings, they're really behind the curve in the competition for talent because more and more job seekers will entirely opt out of applying for an opportunity that doesn't have transparency about paying benefits in the posting.
EMILIE: I've seen that there's good evidence to back that up, too. Like, it makes sense. Give your talent acquisition professionals everything they have to work with in this competitive labor market, for sure, to fill those open positions. I think that's so key.
One thing we saw right after this law was passed was certain companies posting positions saying open to anyone, unless you live in Colorado, or California, or New York. What was the drama there? And we went to court over that, didn't we?
LOUISE: So those Coloradans need not apply postings, really showcased employers that were unwilling to be transparent. And there are few clearer signals an employer can give about how they value or don't value, how they respect or don't respect their workforce. So the folks who are posting for job opportunities, excluding Colorado workers, many of them heard from our beloved Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to help them understand the requirements of Colorado's Equal Pay Law. And many came into compliance.
And we've continued to refine Colorado's equal pay law. In 2023, we made some updates to it to address some of the confusion or a little bit of clunkiness and things we learned about from early implementation that could be smoother for employers and job seekers. We smoothed out some of those clunky parts and there is no longer really an issue with employers. We're no longer seeing employers posting opportunities and excluding Colorado applicants because pay transparency is the national trend and because the employers are getting used to and no longer so resistant to these changes. And Colorado's law has been updated to ensure that it is as clear and smooth to implement as possible.
EMILIE: I love that. I wanted to ask you specifically about those updates made because one of the trickiest parts of the law had to do with posting promotion opportunities. So, if I've been working for a company for two years and I'm advocating for advancements, let's say, I'm being considered for promotion into a management position. Different job, right? Different job entirely. What does the law say now, about how employers have to manage that process? Because I know that was really, I was sitting in at HR conferences where Tracy Marshall from the family program at CDLE was giving lectures to explain implementation on family.
And just like any new laws, family being our statewide insurance program for paid family and medical leave, you know, any new implementation that's going to impact HR is tricky. Staying in compliance in Colorado, in an HR department these days is not easy because Colorado is so active in, like, leading the forefront of these changes. So, I guess the question was, what does the law say we have to do when it comes to salary transparency and those promotion opportunities in particular?
LOUISE: The updates we made in 2023 to ensure equal pay for equal work are intended to clarify those areas where employers were asking a lot of good questions. The law that passed in 2019 required employers to notify their employees of opportunities for promotion. What's a promotion? Who might be considered for it? There were a lot of questions because we were the first to do this. We didn't have a model to follow. We were learning by doing. And what we heard were a lot of good questions from employers really trying to do the right thing.
When we updated the law in 2023, they clarified that when there is a job opportunity with a vacancy to be filled, internally, employees need to be notified of that opportunity, whether or not it would be considered a promotion for them. We just took the, “what's a promotion?”, question out of the equation.
EMILIE: Got it. So it's now a vacancy.
LOUISE: If there's a job opportunity with a vacancy to be filled, internally, employees need to be notified of that job opportunity. And we recognize that there are a number of situations in which a person who's developing their career, maybe growing in their capacity, and readiness to take on additional responsibilities, may have already been performing additional responsibilities.
And we clarified that when I someone is growing in their role in those career development situations, employers no longer have to send out an internal notification to all of their employees that someone is growing in their role. So, the career developments no longer need to be communicated to every employee because it's not a job opportunity with a vacancy to be filled. So clarifying that difference was really helpful.
We also learned a lot from early implementation about the sorts of roles that have a standardized progression once an employee has completed a certain number of months in the role, once they have completed a certain number of cases, in a case manager progression, they can move from level one to level two, from level two to level three in those kinds of employment opportunities and those jobs that have a specified career progression. And there are objective metrics that need to be met to move from one level to the next. We're simply saying that for folks who are working in jobs that have a career progression pathway, they need to be notified of what those objective metrics are to move from one level to the next.
EMILIE: That's really helpful. And just to clarify, when you say employees need to be notified about a job opportunity with a vacancy to be filled, does that notification include salary transparency in it?
LOUISE: Yes. Those postings of job opportunities, whether they are internal or external, they need to include transparency about the pay, the benefits, and other compensation for the role. And in 2023, some of the updates we made also specify that job postings need to include transparency about when and how to apply.
EMILIE: Yeah, an application deadline, that's news to me. I didn't even know that. And that is so relieving to my job seekers who are trying to prioritize their job search, which nowadays requires a lot more applications to go out the door. And so if, you know, an application deadline is clear, that is so, so helpful, and that's good to know.
Just to clarify, one other aspect of this, because I'm a nerd about this, when there is that situation where there's a job opportunity with a vacancy to be filled, requires notification among internal employees, with all the transparency that we just described, does that require public disclosure as well? Like external posting or just internal awareness?
LOUISE: Employers are not required to post anything externally. If they do post a job opportunity, then their employees need to be notified, and if they choose to communicate it outside of their organization. In either case, the basic information about pay, benefits, how and when to apply needs to be included. But the requirements are specific to notifying current employees about those job opportunities.
EMILIE: That's really helpful. I can imagine that that clarification process and just like, refinement through implementation has been so helpful. And I commend anyone who's the first to do this. Right? Like, I love that Colorado has chutzpah, you know, to, like, be the first to go for things like this. As an entrepreneur, I'm biased towards starting and then failing fast if need be, right? Like, going for it, learning along the way, iterating as needed. But in the policy world, that's scarier and harder to pull off. So I tip my hat to you.
Let's talk about the results, because you all came out with the most impressive report in March of this year. That is just so inspiring to me, it made me so proud. I was giving a talk about pay transparency on equal payday. I was back in March, speaking at an amazing day long celebration for International Women's Day with a group called Tempo out of Milwaukee, which is like our Women's Foundation, one of many groups that has formed a coalition of advocates for women's rights, workers rights, and women and families doing better in Milwaukee and beyond.
And I was giving a talk about pay transparency laws, closing the gender wage gap, how to advocate and support the legislators in their state house, which are struggling to get any kind of majority to pass something like this there. And in the meantime, I'm getting emails from the Women's Foundation of Colorado just blowing my mind with the stats of the results of this law. So tell me a little bit about what you've learned in terms of how this law is truly helping to close the gender pay gap, especially here in Colorado.
LOUISE: We were so excited to share this new research on Equal Pay Day this past March, showing that since Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work act went into effect in 2021 compared to before, Colorado women are earning an average of $2,952 a year more. This means we are closing the pay gap here in Colorado faster than the national average. And states like California and Washington that followed suit after we passed our pay transparency law, they put their own pay transparency laws in place. They're seeing faster progress as well here in Colorado. Since the Equal Pay for Equal work Act went into effect, they've closed the gender pay gap in our state by 7 cents on the dollar. And the California and Washington have reduced their pay gaps. Bye. Three cents and five cents on the dollar, respectively, compared to a national average of only two cents on the dollar.
EMILIE: Well, and I'm so encouraged by that, Louise, just to jump in here, because it might not sound like a lot, but this has happened in three years in Colorado. And over the last decade, I think the gender wage gap has, like, barely budged. So, the fact that we're making this much progress in three short years, when we've barely closed it by a cent on average, nationally, in the past decade, is impressive. And my favorite headline from your press release is, Gender Pay Gap In Colorado Closing Three Times Faster Than States Without Pay Transparency Laws. Like that is so incredible to me.
LOUISE: We are so excited about this faster progress. And we were so pleased to see in this analysis, too, the gender wage gap here in Colorado is closing faster than the national average, because women are earning more, not because men are earning less. Men's earnings have held steady over the same period. Even when, accounting for inflation, women are earning nearly $3,000 a year more.
EMILIE: That is so incredible. And it's just a good reminder that this is not a gender war. You know, we're not, like, trying to come after men's salaries. In fact, a lot of women love men and want men to earn more, too. [LAUGHTER] You know, I love Brad the boo and want him to make money, and I don't want his paycheck to go down while my paycheck's going up. That's not what the point of this is. So closing inequities, right? Solving for those systemic inequities is so, so key.
You've been looking for and hearing quite a few stories from women who, across the state of Colorado, have personally benefited from this law. What kinds of stories are you hearing? And also for my listeners who might have been experiencing the benefits of pay transparency laws, I want to hear your stories. We want to hear your stories. So email them to me at emilie@bossedup.org. if you resonate with this conversation and have a story to share of your own. But what are some of the stories that you've been hearing, Louise, as you've been measuring the impact of this law?
LOUISE: So my first thought here goes to a woman I've known for a long time who was displaced from her job during the early days of the pandemic. And she had been looking for new opportunities in the late 2020, and her job search continued into early 2021. So she, in her job search, experienced the difference of the January 1, 2021 requirement to be transparent about pay and job postings. She told me about how her job search strategy shifted when she could see how employers valued the role she was considering. She was able to really hone in on the opportunities that made the most sense for her to pursue, and she was able to accelerate her job search and land a job that paid her what she wanted to be paid.
So I love hearing those stories about how pay transparency promotes focus in job searches. I've heard from employers on the other side of that coin, how much faster the hiring process has been when candidates that are really a good match and fit for the role because they're self selecting into the roles that they see as a good fit. What benefits there are for employers. But the stories that move me most in this are about some of the changes that employers took the initiative to make when, in preparation for this law to go into effect, they've conducted their own internal pay equity analyses.
Some of them found that they've been doing a pretty darn good job, and they could celebrate that. Others found some real gaps, and this isn't surprising here. Yes. When employers did the internal pay analyses, they found some pretty big gender pay gaps. And the stories about the employers who saw those gaps and moved to fix them by increasing the pay for the women who had been underpaid on their teams, those pay increases to close gaps that didn't belong there. The stories that women have shared about what that increase in pay means for the way they're able to show up for their families, the birthday party they were able to throw for their kids, the child care bill that was easier to pay to keep going to work, being able to absorb a rent increase and stay in their home.
These are real, tangible impacts that change women's lives and the lives of their families. And there's so much more to what it means to somebody to feel like they are being fairly valued in their role and what that means for how they show up in the workplace feeling like they are an equally valued member of the team, positions them to be valuable contributors in the team in a way that maybe wasn't quite as possible before, when there was an imbalance that was known or unknown, but really present. So we're excited for all of those changes.
EMILIE: I mean, that is so life changing, right? To get that notification. It's not only a windfall, right? It's like, it's better than a windfall. It's an erasure of injustice, right? It's like this feeling of, hopefully, some relief that you're being compensated fairly and an ability to let go of resentment, if you've suspected or known that you were being paid less than your counterparts, based on gender, age, race, whatever.
And so just to hear that, like, I can almost feel the stress relief that's probably impacting so many women in Colorado, in being able to make those decisions on behalf of our families and our loved ones in our communities. And we know women, when women get windfalls, we spend that money in a better, wiser way that helps our communities and helps our families thrive. And so I love seeing that happen.
This just goes back to my personal revolution here at Bossed Up in the past year, which is personal advocacy is not enough. Like, this is what systemic collective advocacy can do for our prospects as women and as just working people. And so there's a time and a place to negotiate on your own behalf and do your due diligence and tap into all the resources that we have at Bossed Up to do that. But there's also a time and a place to make your voice heard in your state house, in our congress, to help get laws like these passed on the books, because systemic policy changes like these, can have a massive impact on so many women's lives. Louise, where can our listeners learn more about the amazing work that y'all are doing at the Women's Foundation of Colorado?
LOUISE: Thanks so much, Emilie. Please visit us at wfco.org to learn more. All of the resources Emilie pointed to the latest research fact sheets about what employers and job seekers need to know and links to those complaint forms that will get you right to the Department of Labor and Employment, if you see job postings that aren't transparent, or if you have been paid unequally and, uh, want the Department of Labor to take a look at your complaint and help resolve it, all of those resources are at wfco.org/equalpay love it so much.
EMILIE: Louise, thank you so much for all of the amazing work you're doing and for joining me here today to tell us more about it. I appreciate it.
LOUISE: Thanks so much, Emilie, for everything you're doing at Bossed Up and thanks for being a great partner in this advocacy for workplace justice.
EMILIE: For more links to all those great resources we just talked about, including a lot of related episodes and Bossed Up freebies like our free negotiation guide for job seekers, head to bossedup.org/episode462. That's bossedup.org/episode462. You can get a fully written out blog post and transcript that pairs with this episode today and shout it from the rooftops. Help me raise awareness among Coloradans and all folks, whether you're in America or beyond, to the great work that's being done here, so that it can be replicated elsewhere, too.
And I really want to hear from you. If you have a story, whether you're based in Colorado or not, about how pay transparency policies and laws on the books have directly impacted your job search, your career, your take home pay, I want to hear about it. Send me an email at emilie@bossedup.org and I'll make sure to connect you with Louise if there's a way that we can get your story out there. Because it's one thing to pass this kind of a law and to become the model state in the nation to be the first to get it over the finish line. It's another thing to prove that this law is working as intended, benefits employees and employers alike. And that it's not a threat to men's earnings.
So we need your stories to help round out that case that we're making so that we can replicate these results nationwide and maybe even beyond.
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In the meantime, and as always, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together as America's First Black Women's Club coined as their motto way back in 1896, let's lift as we climb.
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