Supriya Jha, Author at 51��News Center

How 51��Is Embracing Pay Equity on the Road to Equality

Chetna Singh — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 11:10:47 +0000

With every new year, personal financial goals tend to be at the top of the resolution list. As the global employer to more than 109,000 people, we’re committed to doing our part by ensuring fair pay. For 2023 and beyond, we’re doubling down on that commitment.

It is important to us because our business is built on trust with our colleagues. That trust leads to high performance and gives us a competitive edge for both talent retention and attraction.

In January 2022, we published a fair pay statement, explaining our philosophy and principles around fair pay. It outlined our efforts to create a culture of equity and inclusion, and a promise to ensure our compensation practices are transparent. Our fair pay motto is “aggregate, don’t segregate.”

In April, we reported that 99.8% of our employees around the world had transparency on their pay range. We also launched a new annual global statistical analysis and made pay equity adjustments.

Even with such positive results, however, it’s still not a time for chest thumping. Among professionals who have a career focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), we know how easy it is to regress. And we have no interest in going backwards. We must continue to raise the bar and push ourselves.

Our current compensation results are not a coincidence and did not happen overnight. We have prioritized fair pay through implementing a global job architecture and global grades framework. We have pushed pay range transparency for employees. We’ve targeted salary adjustments to pay range minimums for those employees whose compensation was below the range. And since last year, we committed to annually reviewing internal pay leveraging statistics to ensure employees are paid appropriately.

At SAP, “fair pay” is more than reducing the gender and ethnicity pay gap. For us, it means focusing on the processes, programs, and guidelines across the organization. We are pushing ourselves to examine the tools leaders use to ensure talent is treated fairly, and that employees with an exceptional work performance are rewarded accordingly.

Fair pay also is about rewarding individuals based on their unique contribution and impact in their teams and the overall company.

We are so committed to promoting pay equity that we’re sharing our insights with others.

Business Beyond Bias features in our 51��SuccessFactors solutions work to help eliminate the inherent biases around age, race, ethnicity, differently abled, and LGBTQ+ communities in HR processes. Our software helps companies uncover unconscious bias in calibration and compensation decisions. It shows where an employee’s pay stands relative to the rest of their job family or group within the company. In addition, it allows you to pull in external market pay information into the compensation worksheet to provide additional data points for ensuring fair and equitable pay decisions.

We’re moving toward a day when equitable pay for all people will no longer be an issue but a basic right for every individual. Until then, we’ll keep working on it.

Supriya Jha is chief diversity and inclusion officer at SAP.
Chetna Singh is senior vice president and global head of Total Rewards at SAP.

Bridging the Digital Gap for Women in Tech

Supriya Jha — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 11:15:15 +0000

Each March, International Women’s Day offers us the chance to pause and reflect on the progress we’ve made from the prior year, set goals for the year ahead, and challenge the status quo to ensure gender equity and respect remain a priority of decision makers worldwide.

Globally, women are becoming and holding public office for longer than in the past. increased from 33.3% in 2016 to 36.9% in 2022, while between 2006 and 2022 women in ministerial positions increased from 9.9% to 16.1%. Although no country has achieved full gender parity, Iceland leads the top 10 economies in closing that gap at 90.8%.

But there is so much more to do.

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It is estimated that at the current rate of progress, achieving gender parity before the year 2155 is increasingly unlikely. This shocking statistic should concern everyone, not just those interested in women’s advancement. Investing in diversity is not just a nice thing to do; it is a business imperative. Companies that are focused on diversity outperform their non-diverse competitors, earning per employee. And it’s no wonder, when we know that diversity helps companies build better products, develop deeper solutions, create valuable experiences for employees, and deliver more lasting results that mirror our diverse world.

Supporting a Diverse STEM Workforce

51��is keenly aware of the unique challenges women and girls face worldwide, but particularly women in tech. Women continue to struggle for representation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, making up approximately 28% of the STEM workforce today. 51��has invested internally and externally in programs that help existing and potential female employees grow and thrive in their careers. Some examples include our Business Women’s Network, which has more than 90 chapters and 17,000 members worldwide; our internal development programs that help women gain visibility to senior leadership in their career journeys; the in North America, which allows us to remove barriers for mid-career professionals returning to workforce through a 20-week “returnship”; and finally our many partnerships, including supporting the , aimed at growing the number of women and non-binary people in technology.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme, “,” closely aligns with SAP’s corporate and business objectives. We’re proud that in the last five years, we have made sustained and incremental progress in workforce diversity. We achieved our goal of 35% women in our workforce and increased the number of women in management from 25.5% in 2017 to 29.4% at the close of 2022. In addition, in 2023, 51��was reinstated to the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which recognizes a commitment to advancing women in the workplace.

Reaching these goals reflects real progress in our recruitment, hiring, and retention practices, as well as in the hearts and minds of our employees and leadership. We’re dedicated to leading the change when it comes to diversity. And yet we’re not finished. To get to 50/50 parity, we must continually push for change and encourage other companies, organizations, and governments to do the same.

The Next Frontier

This is an exciting and challenging time for tech. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT from OpenAI are spurring conversations about the future of work and are being leveraged to make business-critical decisions. As these tools become more readily accessible, their usage, as well as potential misuse, will increase. We know is a result of those who develop it but by working together to combat this, we can actually advance D&I goals. Companies like Eightfold.ai, a talent platform and 51��SuccessFactors customer, saw a 19% increase in hiring of external female candidates by eliminating bias through AI to help companies meet their diversity goals. This positive outcome is just one exciting example of how we can use tech for good to advance D&I initiatives.

We have 365 days until the next International Women’s Day. This time next year, what will you have done in your company, community, and even your own family to advance diverse and inclusive behaviors? How can you be the change you want to see? I look forward to hearing your story.

Supriya Jha is chief diversity and inclusion officer at SAP.

Learning From History: A Conversation with Dr. Clarence B. Jones

Supriya Jha — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:15:15 +0000

Change is the only constant in an ever-evolving world. But embracing change requires courage and acceptance. And achieving real results takes passion and honest efforts. I recently had the great honor of talking with Dr. Clarence B. Jones, who played a decisive role in helping to shape the civil rights movement in the U.S., including serving as a legal counsel, strategic advisor, and draft speech writer to Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Jones was a close confidant of Dr. King, and had a unique insight into his views on . Most notably, the 91-year-old Dr. Jones credits Dr. King with teaching him that we are all human beings with shared humanity and the capacity to love rather than hate, no matter what superficial differences exist between us.

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Even when your enemies denigrate you and spew hate, Dr. Jones said, “you can look beyond that and recognize that no matter what your sexual orientation is, no matter what the color of your skin, there is something so common to being a human being.”

Inspiration

The message is inspirational and sets the foundation to believe in oneself. During the conversation, Dr. Jones shared about his upbringing as the only son of parents who worked as domestic help. His deeply religious mother sent him to a Catholic boarding school when he was six, where he developed fearlessness as a Black child in part due to the Irish nuns who taught to love and value himself. This fearlessness led to a strong self-confidence that held him in good stead when he went to a primarily white public high school at 14.

Initially, he admitted that Dr. King’s advocacy of non-violence didn’t sit easily with him. “I used to say to Martin, you need to go see a psychiatrist, brother […] you mean to tell me you want me to love this segregationist calling me [names] and trying to kill me?” Dr. King would say, “Yeah, unfortunately, I am because you have to look beyond that. He’s just the creature of his temporary condition — that’s not who he really is; that’s what he’s been conditioned to be.”

Dr. Jones said one of the reasons he is never seen in pictures of any demonstrations is because Dr. King wouldn’t permit him to join the protesters because he knew Dr. Jones wasn’t disciplined enough.

Dr. Jones’ “Aha” Moment

However, about a year before Dr. King’s assassination, Dr. Jones had an “aha moment” when he began to understand how powerful Dr. King’s message was. He learned that while all white people may seem to be alike from a distance, “they are not all alike when you get up close.”

He gave the example of the Jewish volunteers he met in the civil rights movement. He said most of them looked like any other white person, but when he asked them directly about why they had joined the movement, they always referred to their grandparents or somebody in their family who had lost their lives in the Holocaust. “It was very moving,” he explained.

Dr. Jones also recalled smuggling paper into Dr. King’s Alabama jail cell in 1963 so that Dr. King could write his famous “Letter from an Alabama Jail.” He also successfully raised the bail money for Dr. King’s release from David Rockefeller in New York.

Transcending Fear

One of the things he said he learned from Dr. King was that he was not fearless. “He was very afraid, but he had this kind of inner religious, moral gyroscope that grounded him,” Dr. Jones said. “At the end of the day, he knew he could bleed, and he could be destroyed, but something gave him a courage that transcended that.”

He recalled Dr. King telling him and civil rights leader Andrew Young that they could not protect him, advising them not to waste their time.

Tragically, Dr. King was fatally shot in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He never doubted that the key to achieving civil rights was to embrace diversity and celebrate our shared humanity. That is a timeless message and something we all can relate to.

Dr. Jones also pointed out that it is difficult to affect positive change if there is a lack of knowledge about history.

As I wrapped up my conversation, I noticed a shift in my mind – my own “aha moment.” I reflected that Dr. King and Dr. Jones stand out because they were courageous beings who loved themselves and others. Their love for humanity, diversity, and inclusion kept them going.

It is upon us as corporate organizations to foster an environment where our colleagues operate without fear and with love for each other. Let love lead the way.