Now in its fourth year, the Fair Pay Awards recognise companies that have fair and non-discriminatory pay policies for their employees. The winners were announced on the basis of the latest pay survey, which involved companies from all over Lithuania.
Companies were judged on four main criteria, with different weightings:
- Homogeneity of rewards, which measures the width of the “clipper” (the difference between the lowest and the highest paid employees) of base rewards in the same positions
- Market standards, which measure the proportion of employees whose pay is below the lower market standard (10th percentile)
- Gender pay gaps in the same positions
- Gender balance in company management
The research is purely empirical, involving objective factual data that is analysed using an algorithm. A large number of companies participate in the battle for leadership each year, and almost all of those surveyed show year-on-year improvements. This year, companies were awarded in categories based on the number of employees.
In the category of small companies (up to 500 employees), Devbridge, a software company, was awarded first prize. It was followed by Worldline Lietuva, Nasdaq, Metso Outotec Global Business Service and Teva Baltics.
In the category of large companies (500+ employees), Littelfuse, a component manufacturing company, came first, followed by Danske Bank, Swedbank, Barbora and Telia Lietuva.
In a separate category of the largest Lithuanian employers, Danske Bank, which has 4.3 thousand employees and continues to grow rapidly, was awarded first place. Palink and Vilniaus University are next. The larger the company, the more difficult it is to control the factors analysed in the study, and this is especially difficult in the case of rapid growth. This result deserves special recognition in this context.
It is also interesting to note that Barbora, which is involved in online trading and related logistics operations, came in fourth place in the large companies category among banks and service centers. This company not only scored well in all criteria, but also had one of the most gender-balanced managements.
According to the latest data from the Statistics Department, the overall average gender pay gap in the Lithuanian economy was around 12% in the second quarter of this year, a few percentage points below the EU average and almost 10% points lower than in neighboring Latvia and Estonia. However, detailed research analysing over 1,200 organisations and 220,000 employees shows that the gender pay gap in the Baltic countries is less than 4%.
Also in spring this year, Sodra (National Social Security Organisation) started publishing average gender pay in companies. The lists of companies with the largest gender gaps include companies that have been recognised in these awards. This is just one example of where studies based on smaller but consistent methodologies reach different or even opposite conclusions. Measuring the gender gap at the company level should be done on a position-by-position basis (e.g. senior project manager, business analyst, support worker, etc.), otherwise the analysis is inaccurate, and the result becomes dependent on secondary considerations and does not reflect reality.