Google recently published the method it uses to determine its employees' pay, in an attempt to prove that it does not underpay female workers. Google claims that its "blind to gender" salary calculations are based on "role, job level, location as well as current and recent performance ratings." This move from the tech giant comes after the US government claimed it had found "systemic compensation disparities against women" across Google's workforce.
In response to the Department of Labor's claims that the internet giant systematically underpays its female staff members, Google says that the analysts who calculate the salary of each employee have no access to the gender information of the employee in question. This is a four-stage process that compares suggested compensation amounts between genders, and theoretically prods the company to make adjustments if any statistical gap is observed.
Google's VP of people operations, Eileen Naughton, said that their analysis gives them confidence that there is no gender pay gap at Google. Further adding, Naughton said that Google's most recent analysis (performed in late 2016 and covering 52 different job categories) found that there was simply no gender pay gap. Naughton further noted that before even pay details are processed through the model, employees are free to get them adjusted by his/her manager with a legitimate adjustment rationale.
It was in September 2015, when Google was asked by the OFCCP to show salary information of its employees but the company had not followed the demand, saying that the request was too broad. The DoL, afterwards, sued the company in January 2017 to get access to the information. Google commented that the OFCCP and the office had reached their conclusion without any supporting it originally demanded. However, speaking to The Guardian, DoL solicitor Janet Herold said that the office had received compelling evidence of significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters.