California Wage And Hour Law Compliance Compensation And Anti-Discrimination Requirements For Employers

CA has long been the leader in eradicating discrimination in employment. Currently a particular area of emphasis is in removing barriers of pay discrimination especially in regards to sex, race and ethnicity through a combination of enhanced enforcement supported through increased legislation. This combination not only attacks individual discrimination but more importantly strips aside the protection of arguments and practices that whether intentionally or not, still have the effect of causing systematic discrimination. Even honest mistakes due to using bad data or mere lack of education in compensation can now be costly. Other employers can no longer hide behind empty arguments or they risk facing costly legal challenges. Such challenges will be easier for employees to prove, since CA employees benefit from their right to increased access to other employee’s pay information.

• Understanding the California Equal Pay Act and how it has been strengthened by the California Fair Pay Act.
• The rights CA employee have to discuss wages.
• What is pay and what is substantially similar work.
• Understanding the two key concepts of compensation – internal equity and external equity.
• How practicing good compensation principles is not only good business but can solve your existing problems and stop new problems from occurring.

• How merit increases can cause problems.
• How variable pay practices invite trouble.
• Eradicating through education, the excuses some old school Managers and Supervisors use in an attempt to explain away pay discrimination as being “just business.”
• How to negotiate salaries without inquiring into past salary history.
• How the new regs force an employer to do that, which is good business in line with current professional compensation methodology.
• Explaining CA obligations in compensation to your managers and especially your hiring managers

Most employers do not set out to discriminate. Such practices are often the inadvertent result from individuals, even those highly educated and experienced, who view compensation through a comparative lens of a combination of their own salary and their personal opinions regarding how people should be paid. Logic goes out the window when those individuals if in authoritative and decision-making positions force their highly personalized and misguided opinions regarding pay onto the organization. Not only is that view bad business in general but it can be disastrous in CA. An employer can no longer even depend solely on job titles to determine wage rates. To further complicate matters, recently the Governor of CA, signed into law AB 168, which bars CA employers from asking job applicants about their previous salary.

• Compensation, Human Resources Managers, Human Resources Directors, Human Resources Generalists, HR, New in position HR, anyone who makes HR decisions, Plant Managers, Division Managers, HR Generalists, HR Managers, HR Directors, or Business Owners.

       Teri Morning

       MBA, MS, specializes in solving company "people problems"

• Teri is the founder and President of Hindsight Human Resources.www.hindsightcloud.com.
• Teri also sources HR software solutions for incident tracking, employee relations, safety (Incident Tracker), compensation (Compease) and performance management (Performance Pro).
• Twenty+ years human resource and training experience in a variety of fields, including retail, distribution, architectural, engineering, consulting, manufacturing (union), public sector and both profit and non-profit companies.
• Teri has enjoyed consulting with employers on their problems and trained managers and employees for over 20 years, meeting and working with employees from all types of businesses.
• In addition to a MBA, Teri has a Master’s degree in Human Resource Development with a specialization in Conflict Management.
• Teri was certified by the State of Indiana in mediation skills, and Teri is currently certified in Project Management and IT Management and qualified as a Myers-Briggs practitioner. Teri has held the PHR, SPHR, SPHR-CA and SHRM-SCP certifications.