Creating an equitable employee compensation plan can involve high-pressure decision-making—perhaps even more so than picking a Saturday-night movie.

While gender- and race-related pay gaps appear to be slowly closing, achieving fairness isn’t as simple as giving everyone a raise for good performance, explained Megan Smith, VP and head of HR at SAP North America. “A lot of companies recognize performance-driven compensation decisions make a lot of sense…But to make a salary decision on that alone ignores a lot of other…relevant environmental factors that also go into fair pay.”

Some companies and US legislators are working to close pay gaps, but compensation experts told HR Brew that the keys to achieving pay parity are pay transparency and regular data analysis and adjustments.

Transparency. “Part of the answer to closing gender wage gaps and racial wage gaps…is greater pay transparency because sunlight is a disinfectant here,” Emily Martin, VP for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told the 19th News site in March.

Just look at Denmark: According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation’s 2006 pay transparency laws reduced the gender pay gap 13% by 2008 (though much of this progress, Politico notes, can be attributed to men’s wages stagnating, not women’s increasing). While research on the effectiveness of pay transparency is still limited, Europe has slowly expanded its pay transparency rules in recent years, and in the US, New York City and some states have taken similar measures to reduce pay disparities. Keep reading here.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

For recruiters in the cybersecurity space, the situation is critical: There’s a dearth of applicants for a surplus of jobs. In April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that “information security analyst” would be the 19th fastest-growing job category in the country between 2022 and 2030. As of that month, there were already 714,548 cybersecurity job openings in the US, according to the job-tracking database Cyberseek.

During its National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit this week, the White House raised the alarm about the deficit of cybersecurity job applicants, writing in a statement: “With approximately 700,000 cybersecurity positions open, America faces a national security challenge that must be tackled aggressively.”

Are recruiters ready to heed the call? They could be, but they’re going to have to get creative by looking beyond the traditional applicant profile, industry experts explained to IT Brew.

What is cybersecurity? Here’s a recent example that may illuminate the concept: A string of security breaches at cryptocurrency exchanges has allowed hackers to get away with digital assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Robust cybersecurity protections are supposed to prevent things like that from happening. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency defines “cybersecurity” as “the art of protecting networks, devices, and data from unauthorized access or criminal use and the practice of ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.”

Filling the job gaps. When it comes to cybersecurity staffing, there’s an irony at play: Recruiters don’t quite understand the intricacies of the positions they’re hiring for, Candy Alexander, chief information security officer at NeuEon and international board president at the Information Systems Security Association, told IT Brew over email last week. Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

On Wednesdays, we schedule our weekly 1:1 with HR Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Cortney Lamar, senior HR generalist at the Jackson County Board of Supervisors, started her career as a police officer. She recently spoke to HR Brew about how to deploy new technology with a change-resistant workforce.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? Working for a government HR department, we tend to be the switchboard or catch-all for employee/employer/general public questions, comments, concerns, or issues. Our office is almost always the first point of contact for those who do not know where else to turn and we (happily) assist them by getting them the resources they need.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? I’d like to think that I am helping to erase any misconceptions people have about my department by bringing back the human aspect to human resources…I’ve managed to do this by simply putting myself into [employees’] shoes and asking myself how I would want to be helped if I were in their situation. We, as humans, can become complacent and dismissive to the feelings of others. But, by simply taking a little extra time to get to know one another, we can quickly gain the trust of those we serve.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? That those in human resources are simply paper-pushers and disciplinarians. There are so many levels to what we do that, unless you work or have worked in HR, you truly do not understand the depths of this career field. We are jacks-of-all-trades!

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job? Keep reading here.

Want to be featured in an upcoming edition of Coworking? Click here to introduce yourself.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 35% of employees surveyed said they faced “no consequences” for failing to return to the office when their employer asked them to. (WFH Research)

Quote: “For employees that have only known this world, the idea of layoffs or cost reduction (or being asked to come into the office) is straight-up heresy. In many ways, this is not their fault. Excess capital led to excessive showering of employee benefits and heightened expectations.”—Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark Capital, on Twitter (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: Friday has always been the laziest day of the workweek. It’s also the emptiest day in the workplace since the pandemic. (the Washington Post)

Peep key deets on employee engagement. Workday’s State of Engagement 2022 report digs into why employee engagement is taking a dip. Learn which areas of your biz can strengthen engagement here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}