Like everyone concerned about equitable compensation in her home country, businesswoman Henrike von Platen eagerly awaited the first German Equal Pay Day in 2008. In some ways, the event—now held annually—delivered on its outsized expectations.

“The campaign ensured a great deal of attention was focused on the difference in income between women and men in Germany,” she says. “It wasn’t long before the causes of the pay gap had been well researched.”

Soon, however, that sense of optimism turned to frustration.

“Despite all the talk, almost nothing happened,” says von Platen. “In the meantime, the pay gap of 21 percent has narrowed by just two percentage points since then—far too slowly.”

Given that lack of tangible results, the finance and IT executive launched the Fair Pay Innovation Lab, or FPI, in 2017. Its goal: to assist companies and organizations in the practical implementation of pay equity, to create a space for dialogue, and to provide suggestions for the labor market.

Though FPI is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, the disparity in pay among the sexes is very much an international issue, especially in the West. Throughout the European Union, women make 16 percent less than men, and in the United States, women take in 15 percent less than their male peers, according to the Pew Research Center.

Von Platen insists there’s widespread consensus to even the economic scales. She points to the Berlin Declaration, signed in 2007 to mark the 50th anniversary of the European Economic Community, as an example. The landmark document called for equality on pay slips, and it received widespread support in politics and in the private sector.

“Everyone wants pay equity,” says von Platen, who serves as the chief executive of FPI. “At the present pace, though, it will take a long, long time to reach that point—around 170 years.”

Developing Sustainable Policies

In order to reach the goal faster, the FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab has offered companies concrete solutions about how to make salaries more equitable since 2017. Every day, it helps clients figure out how to develop sustainable compensation policies and to prepare for laws dealing with salary transparency.

“Despite many firms having had very good experiences with open salary structures, transparency still represents a daring venture for most people,” says von Platen, whose organization earned a Bronze Stevie® Award last year for Organization of the Year in the government and nonprofit category. “Among employees, too, the subject of salary is often a bigger taboo than sexual orientation.”

In addition to implementing best practices in the field, FPI also hosts “fair pay management circles” that encourage leaders to exchange ideas in a private, invitation-only setting.

“We invite experts and decision makers from the fields of industry and commerce, science, and politics to share their views in order to trigger new debates, including controversial ones.”

The organization isn’t just in the business of preaching pay equity, however; it’s also quite literally a laboratory for the ideas it champions. In order to provide a work-life balance, its employees all work from different places and have leeway to create their own schedules. Full-time positions at FPI are only 32 hours per week, so half-time work is 16 hours per week, and 40 hours per week would be a 125 percent post.

Plus, FPI provides employees with one of the tools it offers to clients: a wage calculator where staffers can look up the salary for virtually any job in the organization, even before applying. To determine the pay scale, FPI relies on an objective set of criteria, including relevant professional experience, project experience, and how much responsibility the person takes on.

“We advocate for openness, transparency, and fairness,” says von Platen. “We strive for these values in our own organization and personally test every instrument we promote.”

While closing the pay gap is an uphill battle, the CEO insists it’s one worth fighting.

“Fair pay is imperative to ensuring gender equality,” she says. “Without solving the money question, gender equality will not be reached.”

FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab is a Bronze Stevie Award winner for Organization of the Year - Non-Profit in the 2018 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. 

Interested in winning a Stevie Award for Women in Business?

Syeda Amna Nasir Jamal knows things could have ended up very differently. Faced with the untimely death of her father, a young Jamal suddenly held the reins of the family textile business in Pakistan. Though she had started to work for him at age 13, it wasn’t exactly a role for which she was prepared.

“After the death of my father, there were difficult challenges in our lives,” Jamal says. “We had plenty of setbacks and disappointments.”

Instead of losing hope, she pushed forward. Jamal would have a hand in virtually every aspect of the business, from marketing to human resources, providing the steadying force it needed.

“I overcame obstacles by being shrewd,” she concedes. In time, she would create her own agricultural and textile trading firm, the Karachi-based SAN Enterprises.

Despite her successes, Jamal wanted to do more. She found herself wanting to help the next generation of Pakistanis in overcoming their own obstacles ‒ be it poverty, a lack of education or gender biases ‒ to achieve success in life.

With that goal in mind, she set up a free school for underprivileged children on the SAN premises. Rather than being a distraction, she says the project had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the business. Jamal contends that it’s been a way to attract the sort of employees she values ‒ those wanting to make a positive change in the world.

“Initiatives for social good are one of the ways that you can show a job candidate what it is like to work at your company,” says Jamal. “Candidates want to know they work for a company whose values are aligned with their own.”

Eventually, Jamal created an NGO called the Tavuun Welfare Association so that she could make an even bigger impact within the city and nationwide. Through Tavuun, she’s helped set up a second school in the high-crime Lyari district of Karachi, which promotes academic achievement and civic engagement among women.

“Pakistani society has traditionally been patriarchal, where a female child is often regarded as an ‘unwanted’ being,” Jamal says. “Due to cultural and religious practices, gender discrimination and socioeconomic disparities are very visible.”

As the organization has developed, it’s taken on numerous other projects as well. Among them: a free clinic where low-income residents can receive medical care and a program that provides blankets and other necessities to disaster victims.

Changing hearts and minds

Alongside her work on the ground, Jamal is hoping to bring broader awareness to these issues in Pakistan. She’s created a policy and research organization that shines a light on the downtrodden in Pakistan and often writes for local news outlets on education, health and gender-related topics.

“Unfortunately, human rights is a concept that is still trivialized in the sub-continent,” she explains. “That’s why the current generation of young people has grown up without developing a sense of collective responsibility for social change.”

Changing those ingrained attitudes is a significant task, to be sure. For inspiration, Jamal says she turns to the ancient proverb: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

What she has done so far is nothing short of extraordinary. For her tireless efforts, Jamal won Silver for “Female Innovator of the Year” at the Stevie® Awards for Women in Business in November, 2017. Her NGO, Tavuun Welfare Association, earned the Bronze Stevie for “Organization of the Year.”

Jamal says the recognitions will only help bring more attention to the organization and the causes that she’s trying to remedy. She’s also confident it will boost the morale of her staff and help make it easier to recruit and retain workers.

“Confidence begins with faith, self-determination and dedication to success,” she says. “Winning is an amazing feeling because it says that I am capable of bringing something special to the table.”

The Stevie® Awards today announced Grand Stevie Award winners in The 14^th Annual American Business Awards competition. Winners will be presented with their Grand Stevie trophies at the ABAs’ gala banquet on June 20 in New York.

CallidusCloud, the Dublin, CA based software developer, received the Grand Stevie for organization of the year, for earning the most award points (76) in The 2016 American Business Awards. Other top ABA Grand Stevie winners include TopSpot Internet Marketing (Houston, TX) for interactive agency of the year (17 points), Merkle (Columbia, MD) for marketing agency of the year (16), and MWW (East Rutherford, NJ) for public relations agency of the year (17.5). This is the fourth year in a row that MWW has won this award.

The Grand Stevie Awards were granted to the organizations that submitted the best body of entries to The American Business Awards this year, in their own name or in the names of one or more clients, with a Gold Stevie Award win counting for three points, a Silver Stevie win for two points, and a Bronze Stevie win counting for 1.5 points. The organizations with the most points won.

Besides CallidusCloud, TopSpot Internet Marketing, Merkle, and MWW, Grand Stevies were also awarded to the 10 other organizations with the most points in the 2016 competition. There were a few ties this year.  The other winners are:

1. Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA (52 points)
2. Tied at 27 points: Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL) and Lakeshore Recycling Systems (Morton Grove, IL)
3. Accenture, Chicago, IL (22)
4. Isagenix International, Gilbert, AZ (20)
5. Tied at 18.5 points: Cigna (Bloomfield, CT) and John Hancock (Boston, MA)
6.  Tied at 17.5 points: AT&T (Dallas, TX) and New American Funding (Tustin, CA)
7. SoftPro, Raleigh, NC (17)

The American Business Awards honor an all-inclusive spectrum of American business people and organizations -- from non-profits, emerging start-ups, major public companies and government agencies, to corner-office executives, product developers, marketers and web development teams. More than 3,400 entries were submitted to The 2016 American Business Awards and more than 250 executives nationwide participated in judging.

Stevie Awards are conferred in five levels of distinction: Grand, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and People’s Choice. More than 400 executives and their guests are expected to attend the June 20 awards gala at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel.

For a complete list of all 2016 American Business Awards’ Stevie Award winners visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

This is the first year in which Stevie winners in The American Business Awards are announced before the awards gala. In the ABAs’ first 13 years, finalists were announced in advance of the awards gala, but the Stevie winners weren’t revealed until the night of the presentations.