International Pay Equity Day: More Than Just One Day

International Equal Pay Day, celebrated on 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. Across all regions, research shows women are paid less than men, with the gender pay gap estimated at around 20 per cent globally—but not at IFF.

IFF’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategy

Achieving gender balance at IFF is one of the ways we are able to be the partner of choice for our customers, the employer of choice for our workforce and do more good in the world.

It is one of our 2030 ESG Goals.

To achieve this, IFF’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategy focuses on three pillars, one of which is ensuring an inclusive talent pipeline.  This includes embedding tools and processes into our talent systems to make them fair, impartial, and bias free all the way from hiring, development to promotion and including compensation.

Delivering Pay Equity

On this International Pay Equity Day, we want to share our methodology to deliver pay equity regardless of gender.  

IFF has maintained a strategic partnership with EDGE, the leading global standard for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), centered on a workplace gender and intersectional equity approach.  As part of our EDGE Certification, IFF conducts gender pay equity analysis for all roles in the 27 countries with 200 or more employees that are part of our Global Certification.  Those 27 countries represent 90 percent of IFF’s workforce. We’re proud to say that we did not find any statistically significant pay gaps in favor of men. These results are audited and verified by a third party.

We analyze against EDGE’s variables: gender, tenure, age, individual contributors vs. people managers, level of responsibility (executive, upper management, middle management, junior management, and operational levels). We add an additional customized variable based on our individual job levels. 

EDGE Analysis methodology uses a linear regression that can quantitatively demonstrate whether an organization has a pay gap which cannot be explained by any other factors other than gender.  Any pay gap that is found is shared with IFF’s Compensation team to understand and where necessary, addressed.  Local HR may also be informed so that moving forward such gaps are mitigated. 

We’re proud to partner with EDGE, the UN Global Compact to address gender inequity and to do our part to build a more sustainable equitable world where women thrive economically.