In episode 35 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee discuss their favorite Halloween candy, dig into BlackRock’s recent policy change that mandates employee report all romantic relationships, including those with all company partners and vendors, and wrap it up with a discussion on Performance vs. Trust via a famous Simon Sinek video. 

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player below) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1:30 – Halloween is right around the corner! JLee is modifying the normal Halloween routine for her two young kids. She’s excited because her kids are getting into Star Wars and they’re doing a Star Wars family costume.

3:00 – Tim’s family is doing a Michigan vs. MSU football/Halloween neighborhood tailgate. He is trying to decide if he wants to be Biden or Trump for his costume.

4:15 – What is your favorite Halloween candy? Tim is team Reese’s pumpkin because of the peanut butter to chocolate ratio. KD likes the bite size (better known as fun size) Snickers. JLee likes a classic Kit Kat.

6:45 – First topic: BlackRock is now requiring all employees to disclose any sort of romantic relationship with anyone in the company or anyone related to the company, including all vendors and partners, which includes 1/5 of the known world by definition. The company may make alternative work arrangements depending on reporting from employees. 

8:00 – Tim, the HR Famous workplace harassment expert, thinks that this new policy is stupid because it limits so many romantic or sexual relationships.

9:30 – JLee doesn’t want to know every possible relationship between employees from an HR perspective. She says it’s TMI!

10:30 – KD says that this policy follows a few scandals with relationship reporting at BlackRock involving high level employees. 

14:30 – The gang suggests a hashtag for Blackrock – #sexlessnation

15:00 – JLee tells us what questions would have to be asked about these relationships. 

16:20 – The HR Famous crew wishes the best to the BlackRock HR crew with this new policy. #sexlessnation

19:30 – Second topic of the day: Simon Sinek’s video Performance vs. Trust. In this video, Sinek talks about the Marines and how value trustworthiness vs. high level performance.

22:40 – JLee thinks that this is a hard lesson for a leader to learn because you often only learn you can’t trust someone once someone has made a mistake.

23:30 – Tim brings up Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book Talking To Strangers and how humans tend to default to trust when often people are not being trustworthy.

26:00 – Shoutout to Ed Baldwin and the book The Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman. He defines trust in his book as sincerity, reliability, and competence. 

27:00 – KD and JLee would love if Simon would button up his shirt one more button!

In episode 3 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Tim Sackett and Kris Dunn discuss recent legal proceedings designed to force Glassdoor to disclose reviewer identities, take a look at the company involved by reviewing their Glassdoor page and activity, and talk about dramatic changes to the SHRM Annual Conference Influencer Program.

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!!! Listen on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play.

Show Highlights:

2:45 – Tim walks though recent changes to the Influencer Program at the SHRM Annual Conference.

12:06 – Tim and JLee discuss the challenges of Glassdoor as employers and discuss Tim’s CEO rating on Glassdoor.

13:42 – KD lays out a recent court proceeding where a company (Kraken) is asking for the identities of Glassdoor commenters due to violation of confidentiality clauses in signed severance agreements.

16:15 – JLee labels Kraken as a JV squad. Tim reviews the timing of the layoffs, the targeting of former employees with a cease and desist letter about Glassdoor comments, smart Glassdoor management and more.

21:18 – The gang breaks down the Kraken Glassdoor page and activity. JLee comes in with breaking news of a warning at the top of the Kraken page. Heavy discussion of the relationship between paid customers and Glassdoor ensues.

22:55 – More Kraken analysis as the gang looks deeper into their glassdoor page and starts sorting by low and high ratings and see what’s most popular and reads titles of negative reviews and analyzes traffic to positive vs negative posts. Spoiler – people read the negative reviews more.

26:34 – The gang discusses the right way to respond to Glassdoor reviews to be credible and authentic. Code words in employer responses are also discussed.

If you’re a SHRM member or even remotely following major initiatives within the world’s largest association of HR professionals, odds are you’ve heard of “Getting Talent Back to Work”, a pledge drive to promote the hiring of candidates with criminal histories.

Which begs the question – are HR pros really open to hiring people with criminal backgrounds who are available in the talent marketplace?

I was reminded of “Getting Talent Back to Work” at the SHRM National conference, when SHRM CEO Johnny Taylor promoted the cause during his address to the general assembly.

Taylor is easily the best presenter SHRM has had as a CEO.  More on that in a bit.  First, let’s do a level set and tell you what “Getting Talent Back to Work” is as a program/initiative/platform:

"Getting Talent Back to Work is a national pledge open to all organizations that was signed even before the formal announcement by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association, the National Retail Federation, the American Staffing Association, SHRM, Koch Industries, Dave’s Killer Bread Foundation and more.

Getting Talent Back to Work was launched in January 2019, and SHRM immediately got criticized for the inclusion of Koch Industries in the list of organizations agreeing to the pledge.  Koch is run by the Koch brothers (Charles and David), who moonlight as political fundraisers/operatives on the Republican side of the aisle.

I discounted the criticism at the time due to the list of organizations beyond Koch Industries that signed the pledge. Any time you have the National Retail Federation and the National Restaurant Association sign off on a pledge to do something differently in the realm of employment, it’s meaningful.  But seeing Johnny Taylor - a pretty dynamic mix of presenter and disrupter as the CEO of SHRM - go after the issue hard at SHRM made me want to dig in on the issue a bit.

So, I asked 15 Director/VP of HR types at SHRM National what they thought about “Getting Talent Back to Work.”  Here’s a summary of what I heard:

1—Everyone understands the idea has merit.  As our society has become more progressive, it’s clear that most of the people I talked to supported the spirit behind the pledge. Most of us believe in second chances.

2 –The devil, as it turns out is in the details. Here’s where it gets dicey. What jobs are available to those with criminal backgrounds?  Concerns from my groups of HR Directors/VPs are raised where you would expect – in financial jobs, jobs which provide autonomy of work using expensive tools, etc.  If we restrict access to only the lowest level jobs with limited risk, is attempting to employ those with criminal histories still meaningful?

3--Most feel there will be resistance to the idea across the leadership teams they belong to back at the home office related to the concept. While the HR leaders I spoke to get the intent of the Getting Talent Back to Work pledge, most indicated there would be friction and blocking activity as they tried to execute changes to existing policy related to hiring candidates with criminal histories.

4—Hiring Managers are also thought to be a major roadblock. As expected, most of the HR leaders I spoke to thought hiring managers would be less than supportive to this type of hiring policy change. 

With all that in mind, my takeaways after these conversations were simple. HR pros are open and welcome participating in Getting Talent Back to Work, but they’re also unclear about the best way to proceed in knocking down barriers that exist in their organizations.

That means Getting Talent Back to Work as a SHRM initiative has legs, but the next step in the program for SHRM will need to focus on helping HR leaders make the business case to skeptics back at the home office.  While most of the HR pros I talked to were generally unaware of the toolkit that exists here, a review of the resources makes me recommend the toolkit will need to expand provide a base-level communications campaign that a normal HR leader could use to make presentations, send emails and general communicate the policy changes they're asking for. 

The tools that exist are strong, and the next step probably needs to be ghostwritten materials that show an HR leader step-by-step what they can do to initiate change in their organizations.

I like what SHRM is doing in this area, and the fact they stayed on message at the national conference. The next step is to push HR leaders to take action inside their companies and start the necessary dialog.

Change is likely to be slow, but it's a conversation worth having.

Well, I heard some people talkin' just the other day
And they said you were gonna put me on a shelf
But let me tell you I got some news for you
And you'll soon find out it's true...

-"Already Gone" by the Eagles

------------------------------------

I think I've written about people being put on administrative leave before - but I'm reminded of it on the news that Ohio State put football coach Urban Meyer on Paid Administrative Leave this week.  Meyer is currently looking at the kitchen walls at home as his phone blows up, based the school announcing it is investigating Courtney Smith's claims that several people close to Meyer knew of a 2015 allegation of domestic violence against her ex-husband, former Ohio State assistant football coach Zach Smith, who was fired in July.

This post isn't about college football.  It's about the use of Administrative Leave, usually of the paid variety.

Paid Administrative Leave means the following things:

1--Whatever you're accused of is too damn hot to allow you to remain in the workplace.

2--Your employer believes that you likely did enough (or didn't do enough for leadership positions) on the issue in question to warrant your eventual termination.

3--Administrative Leave is a form of action your employer can point to as taking action while they actually investigate what happened on the issue in question.

4--YOU ARE UNLIKELY TO COME BACK FROM ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE.

Got it? Great.  Let's dig into #4 above a bit.  It's a tough pill to swallow for some.

YOU ARE UNLIKELY TO COME BACK FROM ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE.

Your employer put you out because they believed there was a high probability your investigation would end in a termination.

But for every day you are out, your career expertise and power, as well as your ability to return to your job, decreases in a dramatic way.  That stinks. It's like a game of Fortnite where you have a power level for an individual.  You're getting whacked hard every day you are out, and the players in the game all see your power level after a week of being out and determine it's only a matter of time before you're out of the game.  This perception makes it hard for you to survive and come back off of paid administrative leave.

That stinks because sometimes you're innocent.  The good news for most people who will read this is that their process would be nowhere near as public as Urban Meyer.

If you're confronted with an allegation, do what you can to avoid being placed on leave.  Offer to take vacation, personal days and generally get out of the way.  Avoid the tag of Administrative Leave if you can.

Oh yeah, be sure to take action on people who do bad things and shouldn't be part of the company.  Don't protect people you like who do stupid things.  Don't do stupid things.  These are all viable options to avoid administrative leave.

If you've been in the business world long enough, you've ran into executives at both small and big companies making agreements to not recruit other company's employees.  These agreements are a by-product of the good-ole-boy network and usually the result of one executive knowing another and agreeing to keep each other's companies "off-limits" to recruiting efforts.

It's called collusion, right?  Funny thing is, HR has never really had a voice in that.  Instead, we find out what the agreement is "ex post facto" and if we're really lucky, we get to ruin someone's life by retracting an offer due to these informal agreements - after that employee has already resigned at their current company.

It's always been stupid like that.  The good news is that the legal system is rapidly taking these agreements off the table.  First it was Silicon Valley and now seven fast food chains — including Arby's, Cinnabon and McDonald's — have pledged to end so-called "no-poaching" rules that have prevented employees from moving from one franchise to another within the same restaurant chain: More from CNN:

"Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thursday the agreement could end the practice at roughly 25,000 restaurants nationwide.

The move will mean fairer hiring practices for "tens of thousands of low-wage" workers in the United States, Ferguson's office said. His office also said it will take legal action against franchises that violate the agreement, and the companies could face civil penalties or fines.

The fast food chains included in the agreement are Arby's, Auntie Anne's, Buffalo Wild Wings, Carl's Jr., Cinnabon, Jimmy John's, and McDonald's (MCD).

"No-poach" rules bar workers at franchise-owned restaurants from being hired by a separate franchise within the same chain.

Because such rules are usually laid out in company-franchise contracts, and not in worker agreements, employees have often been unaware they existed, Ferguson's office said."

Uh, yeah - the employees didn't know they existed because they are LITERALLY THE LAST THING ON ANYONE'S MIND IN THESE AGREEMENTS.

The no-poach agreement will continue to exist in pockets, but I've got good news for my HR leaders who are expected to enforce them.

You can now tell your company they are illegal as hell.

Score one for the worker.  I'm generally pro-business, but c'mon.  A no-poach agreement that means a counter worker at Arby's can't move to another Arby's?

This is why we can't have nice things.

A lot of people will tell you that non-competes aren't enforceable.  My experience with them says that the company with the most leverage/biggest checkbook can inflict a lot of financial pain on a smaller competitor that poaches talent (when there's a signed non-compete in play_.

The rules as I see them:

1.  Bigger companies can afford to write checks to enforce a non-compete when a much smaller competitor steals talent from them.

2.  Smaller companies can't do much to big companies who steal talent (where the past employee of smaller company had a signed non-compete).  They're basically starting a battle they can't afford.

3. Big company vs big company is more complex. Both have resources, so the considerations are more strategic - things like influencing others to not challenge non-competes comes into play, IP considerations, etc.

My experience is the biggest checkbook wins.  That means that while the non-complete may not be enforceable, there's still a leveraged play to be made to inflict pain or play strategic games.

But if you're interested in the actual legal merits of non-completes, movement in the self-driving car industry tells you they are DOA.  More from Tech Times:

"Apple is beginning to acquire high-profile employees to help develop its self-driving software project, which reports say is already behind schedule at this point.

The Information reports that Apple has hired Jaime Waydo, who previously worked as a senior engineer at Waymo and was involved in the development of one of NASA's Mars rovers. An Apple spokesperson has since confirmed the hiring but didn't reveal what she would be working on inside the company.

Waydo, who served as head of systems engineering at Waymo, is described by her colleagues as "instrumental," according to the report. She led safety verification for the company's prototypes and delivered input on when it was safe to launch on-the-road tests in Phoenix back in 2016. It's safe to assume she'll do similar work in Apple's turf."

Think about that for a second.  An industry with max innovation going on allows creators to move between companies.  If that doesn't tell you that non-competes are dead (see my rules, you can still inflict pain, but we're talking here about the legal merits), nothing will.

Part of that is likely due to the fact that in the PRoC (People's Republic of California), non-competes face such a hostile legal environment that companies don't even try.

Which brings us to the the 4th rule of non-competes to add to my 3 rules at the top of this post:

4. The new way to enforce TAFNAANC (the agreement formerly known as a non-complete) is to make employees sign hardcore Intellectual Property (IP) agreements, with strong provisions not to transfer IP or infringe on IP created at your company.

How do you do that?  I don't know, but look no further than the alleged theft of trade secrets by a former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski—and the alleged use of those secrets by Uber—which was at the center of Waymo’s lawsuit last year vs Uber.  

It wasn't a non-complete that crushed Uber, it was the allegation that Levandowski used trade secrets at Uber developed at Google/Waymo.

For a lot of you reading this, you're thinking this is all a little bit deep when it comes to how you should consider non-competes - and you're right.  Continue to have narrowly drawn non-competes signed by sales pros and others that make sense if legal in your state.  They are a barrier people have to think about.

But if your product is IP heavy, consider re-looking at your IP agreements people sign when they come info the company.

Oh yeah - then put some golden handcuffs on people in the form of LTIPs so they have to think twice about leaving money on the table before leaving.  LOL.

Good luck!

Hey companies filling your employment coffers with low priced talent!  You might want to take a look at the numbers...

In case you missed it, PricewaterhouseCoopers took an Age Discrimination case in 2016.  Some legal details from the site that's inviting others to join the class action:

On April 27, 2016, Steve Rabin, an older CPA who was denied employment at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (“PwC”), filed an age discrimination class and collective action on behalf of himself and all other unsuccessful PwC accountant applicants aged 40 and over from 2013 to the present.  The lawsuit is titled Rabin v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Case No. 3:16-cv-02276, pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

The class and collective action complaint alleges that PwC has engaged in systemic discrimination against older applicants for accounting positions.  For instance, PwC primarily hires entry-level accountants through campus recruiting, does not post entry-level accountant positions on its website, and provides no ready mechanism for individuals no longer affiliated with a college to apply for these positions.  Moreover, PwC prides itself on maintaining a young workforce, focusing on attracting and maintaining “Millennials,” and requiring partners to retire by age 60.  The ageism that pervades PwC’s recruitment system and corporate culture has resulted in older accountant applicants being almost completely shut out of accounting positions at PwC. 

In February 2017, the Court ruled that Plaintiffs can pursue disparate impact claims against PwC under the ADEA.  PwC had argued that job applicants are not allowed to pursue such claims under federal law.  You can find more information about this recent ruling here.

In December 2017, the Plaintiffs asked the Court to allow all applicants covered by this case to proceed together on a collective basis rather than individually, in what is called a motion for conditional certification. A decision by the Court is likely this spring. Please check back in April of 2018 for updates.

The Goal of the Lawsuit
The class action seeks seeks to require PwC to hire accountants based on merit alone, without regard to their age, and to compensate accountants who might have been hired but for PwC’s discriminatory practices.

Yowza.  The Wall Street Journal reported some interesting numbers on Tuesday as a District Court Judge heard arguments from both sides on whether to allow 14,000 other older candidates who didn't get a job with PwC to join a class action on the same claim.  I can't share the exact text from the WSJ since it's behind a paywall, but here's a couple of tidbits:

--PwC hires less than 5% of the 300,000 applicants who apply annually in US.

--PwC hired 18% of the applicants who were under 40 to it's tax and assurance business, while only hiring 3% of the candidates over 40.

--Older workers claim that older workers are steered to part-time and seasonal roles are aren't considers for the entry level roles the company lists as full time opportunities.

For now, the judge is simply ruling on whether to allow the 14,000 older candidates who have raised their hand to join a class action suit.  An actual ruling on the matter could be years away.

Interesting legal battle.  Without question, companies like PwC prefer to hire young talent that's cheaper right out of college.  Is that bias? If so, will they be held accountable for it?

Going to be interesting to track this one.

As warranted by the stupid, inappropriate behavior of some men, the #metoo movement has mostly outed those men for the harassers they are.  But now, we have our first public female victim of the #metoo movement.

This one is juicy folks, because as HR pros, you know more about this one than anyone else in the world.  Read on, analysis after the clip below.  More from the Washington Post:

A Democratic candidate hoping to flip a hotly contested congressional seat in Kansas has dropped out of the race after allegations that she sexually harassed a male subordinate resurfaced during her campaign.  Andrea Ramsey, 57, who was running to unseat Republican Kevin Yoder in a district that includes Kansas City in 2018, is one of the few, if only, women in public life to step down thus far amid a national conversation about sex and power dynamics in the workplace.

The allegations against Ramsey were outlined in a 2005 lawsuit and a complaint filed by a dismissed employee, Gary Funkhouser, to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, when Ramsey was working as an executive vice president of human resources at medical testing company LabOne, according to the Kansas City Star.

In the federal complaint about sex discrimination and retaliation, Funkhouser accused Ramsey, then Andrea Thomas, according to the Star, of making “unwelcome and inappropriate sexual comments and innuendos” when he was a human resources manager for LabOne.

Funkhouser alleged that he had suffered consequences at work because he had rebuffed an advance he said she made during a business trip in 2005.

“After I told her I was not interested in having a sexual relationship with her, she stopped talking to me,” he wrote, according to documents filed in court. “In the office, she completely ignored me and avoided having any contact with me.”

The EEOC closed its investigation in 2005, saying that it was “unable to conclude that the information obtained establishes violations of the statutes.” Though Ramsey was not charged directly in the lawsuit, she had been named in the complaint. It was settled by the company after mediation in 2006 and had begun to be discussed in political circles recently, the Star reported.

Without naming Funkhouser, Ramsey said that a man decided to bring a lawsuit against the company after she eliminated his position.

“He named me in the allegations, claiming I fired him because he refused to have sex with me,” she wrote. “That is a lie.”

Hell hath no fury like a HR pro fired, especially one that thought he/she was on the inside, only to be on the outside.  Do I know the guy made it up?  Do I think Ramsey hit on the guy on the road?

I don't know what happened, but here's what I know:

1--The fact that it was an HR pro bringing the claim makes it different from any we have seen.

2--HR pros know things.  Things like how to bring EEOC claims - their awareness of how to do things like this is higher than almost everyone else's in your company, mainly because they have defended those claims.  They also know those claims are usually settled.

3--Ramsey didn't have to directly hit on him to have this coming.  It's possible that the HR manager in question felt like he was being harassed in other ways and just made that "she wanted to sleep with me on the road" detail up.  Or - as we've learned so many times with harassment, he may have interpreted her offer to come have a drink in the hotel lobby as a solicitation to get busy.  Maybe it was.  #funkhousertoo

4--She apparently didn't open her door in a partially open robe like Weinstein when she asked him to come up and "pick up the comp study to read for the meeting in the morning".  At least I didn't read that detail.  LOL.

5--The name Funkhouser is cool.  If you're wondering where you heard that before, Marty Funkhouser is a recurring character on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Imagine being at that company and saying, "Did you hear about the Funkhouser lawsuit against Andrea?"

The bottom line is this. Hell hath no fury like an HR pro fired or caught up in a reorganization.  The savvy HR leader knows the answer - Andrea Ramsey should have loaded up young Funkhouser with an exceptional severance package on the way out.  

I'll repeat one of my core sayings - "In America, allegations are free."  Anyone can file a claim.   And it's that fact that we all should remember as HR leaders as we go through various reorganizations.

Anyone can file a claim, but HR pros?  They know more about how to do it and the process that happens afterwords than anyone in the world.

If there's one thing HR Pros hate, it's taking on unnecessary risk.  After all, you're the one that thinks about legal things, and more often than not, you're the one left to answer for what happened when the lawyers come in.  Could that by why there's so much CYA going on in our profession?

One of the things I've never thought about in my years writing as an HR pro is how lawyers on the other side (i.e., the ones that are suing your company) approach a deposition. That's why this post by John Hollon over at Fistful of Talent is a must share.  John found a piece of video gold from an employee-side attorney that gives the playbook on his general game plan to take down HR pros in depositions.

That's right - the complete game plan on how he's going to circle around and trap you, formatted neatly in 5 things all layers should do when taking a deposition from HR.

I can't share the video since it's hosted by the firm and not on YouTube, but below is John Hollon's rundown of what the video says. Click through to see the video and also see John's analysis as a non-HR pro who's covered our industry at a high level for years:

Yes, I think HR would love to see how employment attorneys plan to wring information out of them.

In the video, Lawrence Bohm talks about the five (5) things lawyers should do when taking a deposition from HR:

1. Get the Goods. From Bohm: “Instead of focusing on the bad things your client allegedly did, always start your deposition with the human resource professional, to have them point out the good things that your client has done. Have them go through the performance evaluations were they talk about your client doing a good job. Have them explain that putting an employee as “meets” or “exceeds expectations” is an indication that the employee is doing a good job. … Make the human resource professional agree with you on the record about the good things that your client did to contribute to the workplace.”
2. Paper Policies. From Bohm: “Almost every workplace has policies but they don’t follow them. This is a gold mine for HR depositions. … Have the human resource manager confirm that these rules existed; and then have the human resources manager confirm that the rules were not followed. Then point out in a kung fu fashion that these rules could have been followed, but somebody made a choice not to follow the employer’s workplace rules.”
3. Core Values. From Bohm: “The human resource professional more than anybody else in the business should know what that business’ core values are. Core values are really important to juries and HR should know them. If they don’t know what the core values are, what an amazing testimony you get when you ask the person in charge of 1000 employees, “What are the company’s core values?” and they look back at you say, “I don’t know.”
4. “It wasn’t me!” Syndrome. From Bohm: “Take advantage of the “It wasn’t me!” syndrome that seems to plague every human resource manager I have ever met. And it’s because it usually is true! The human resources department is trying to keep these managers from doing very stupid and malicious things. And when the case happens where they couldn’t stop management from doing that stupid thing, the human resources professional is always ready to tell you under oath, “It wasn’t me!” You want to take advantage of that finger pointing.”
5. Prevention. From Bohm: “This is the kryptonite of every human resource witness I have ever deposed. It’s on the subject of prevention. This is your ultimate kung fu power. Talk about what the human resources manager could have done, should have done, or did not do, to prevent the illegal conduct from happening in the first place.”

The bottom line to this other than it feels sleazy to everyone on our side?  You can't protect yourself from all of this, but awareness of what the game plan is by you can raise your awareness and probably save you from looking like a total moron - because you're not.

Can sleazy lawyers still take what you say out of context?  Of course - but when you're forced to give details that make you or the company look bad, being aware of what the other side is after can ensure you get context into the record of the deposition.  

And getting context into the record is something that might save your reputation - or job.

Back in late 2015, I reported on proactive moves by Salesforce to do pay equity increases across its workforce to eliminate any and all gender pay issues, job by job. Here's a rundown from the post:

"In a panel at a conference organized by Fortune last week, Marc Benioff, the CEO of the cloud-based software company Salesforce, said that he recently ordered a review of all 17,000employees’ salaries to see if female employees’ pay was in line with those of male employees doing similar jobs. According to Fortune, Benioff said that the company is spending about $3 million extra this year on its payroll to make these adjustments. “We can say we pay women the same that we pay men,” he said the conference. “We looked at every single salary.”

Salesforce has declined to clarify the $3 million figure or provide further details—the size of the average adjustment, how many employees saw their salaries changed, and how they reacted—but is going to put out a report with more information next year."

At the time, I thought the move was brilliant, as it changed the conversation about workforce diversity to one of workforce equality - an equal goal that once achieved, was bound to change the narrative related to how much slack the world was going to give Salesforce for having some work to do on the diversity front.

Well, here's another reason to go for pay equity if you're a company like Salesforce - to keep the DOL from knocking on your door and playing hardball, like they just did at Google.  

"In their efforts to bring wage equality to Silicon Valley, government officials have accused one of the tech industry's anchor firms of large-scale gender discrimination.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), available data suggests that women who work at Google suffer from "systemic compensation disparities" compared to their male peers. As part of an ongoing lawsuit, the DOL alleged that the company, a frequent recipient of federal contracts, has violated federal law by discriminating against female employees in the salary department.

In recent years, Google has reportedly been well averse to sharing such data with the DOL, which seeks to compel the company to disclose wage and other information under federal employment laws. Testifying in San Francisco on Friday, DOL regional director Janette Wipper told the court that the government had uncovered "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce" in its investigation of available company data from 2015, The Guardian reported."

The fact that Google's taken this DOL charge show's how brilliant the 2015 move by Salesforce and Benioff was.  Not only did they change the narrative related to diversity (important, but so it equality, people!), they didn't get sued.

Did Google have the money to do something similar to the Salesforce move on pay? Of course they did. But leading means you're proactive, even when you don't have to be.

Well played, Salesforce.  Good luck, Google.  You'll likely end up making the same equity increases Salesforce did, but it will look forced and you won't get credit for leading.