SUPPORT PAY TRANSPARENCY IN PLANNING
The Georgia Tech Student Planning Association (SPA) aims to support students’ professional endeavors and advocate for advances in the planning profession. We believe increased pay transparency can work towards both of these goals.
SPA is requesting participation from planning professionals in collecting anonymous information about your pay as a planner. Read our full statement below!
What is pay transparency?
Pay transparency is the act of sharing wages, vacation and holiday pay, insurance and other benefits, and other workplace compensations. These conversations can be initiated by employers or employees and can occur at any number of levels (between individuals, within companies, across industries). Increased pay transparency can help employees negotiate for fair and equitable compensation, reduce discrimination based on factors such as gender and race, and has even been shown to increase workplace productivity. Additional resources with more information about pay transparency are included below.
Why is pay transparency important for planning students?
Increased pay transparency provides a number of additional benefits to students and young professionals. First, many planning students have not held a formal position in the planning field and are unsure of comparable starting salaries for people with similar levels of qualifications and experience. Providing information on entry level positions can help students set reasonable expectations for positions out of graduate school. Second, pay transparency across sectors (public, private, non-profit) can help students make more informed career decisions and ideally encourage different businesses to offer competitive pay to attract promising talent. Lastly, understanding pay levels at different career points (entry-level vs. mid-tier vs. senior-level) can give students, emerging professionals, and anyone else at other points in their career a better idea of what they can expect in terms of pay from a career in planning.
How can you support our efforts?
To collect this information, SPA has created an anonymous Google worksheet with columns to fill-in information such as position, organization, beginning and current salary, and years of relevant experience. If you have more than one position that you’d like to input information about, please make each position its own row. All fields are optional, and we will not ask for personally identifiable information to respect your privacy and mitigate any potential negative consequences from sharing pay information. We are intending this to be a public, living document that we will host on our website, making this resource available to our students at Georgia Tech, students at other universities, and professionals at all levels.
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We thank you in advance for your support and participation in our pay transparency actions. We believe increasing pay transparency in the planning profession is an important step in making planning a more equitable, accessible, and attractive field for all.
Any questions, comments, and concerns should be directed to gtspaboard@gmail.com
Additional Resources
Information from the US Department of Labor on Labor Rights and Pay Transparency: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/regs/compliance/factsheets/FACT_PayTransparency-Sept16_ENGESQA508c.pdf
Article from Forbes: ​​https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2018/09/05/pay-transparency-is-the-solution-to-the-pay-gap-heres-one-companys-success-story/?sh=39a648555010
Article from Time:
https://time.com/5353848/salary-pay-transparency-work/
Article from HR Morning:
https://www.hrmorning.com/articles/pay-transparency/
Article from the Washington Post: