This German Startup Wants To ‘Certify The World’ For Fair Pay

Henrike Von Platen has been an equal pay activist for as long as she can remember. In 2016, however, she decided to change her approach. Instead of organizing campaigns to raise awareness, she started to work directly with companies to ensure fair pay.

Von Platen launched the Fair Pay Innovation Lab, a nonprofit working with companies of any size to provide Fair Pay certification. That’s how she believes she can have the biggest impact.

“I prefer talking positive and looking into making things better,” she said. “And that works and that's why it's so enjoyable.”

FPI is a German-based organization, but Von Platen is not shy with her ambitions.

“I want to certify the world to make sure the world pays fairly,” she said in a video call. To date, FPI has certified 11 German companies, and two in Iceland. Many more are currently going through the application process.

To get one of FPI’s three certifications — Analyst, Developer and Leader — companies first need to register on FPI’s website, get an analysis from an independent software company or consultant and send in the results to see how they rank. Then, the company decides what to prioritize when it comes to salary tiers and promotion and start acting on it — closing the gap. Companies that fully pay fair salaries achieve Leader status.

One of FPI’s goals now is to certify a city for the first time. She says she’s been in touch with a few city governments so far in Europe in order to also engage with the public sector. FPI also does a lot of behind-the-scenes exchanges with businesses and governments on best practices for fair pay legislation and policies.

Advocating for women in the workplace is nothing new for Von Platen. Before founding FPI, she was the president of Business and Professional Women Germany, a foundation promoting equal pay and worldwide networking for women. She also founded a women’s investment club and is a member of Women on Boards initiative.

Getting certified

When Robert Szilinski, the CEO of Esentri, a digitization consultancy, decided to go ahead and get a Fair Pay certification from FPI, he expected a thorough process that would end up with a checkmark but what he did not expect was how much he would learn about his company.

“It’s had a huge impact on our management,” he said in a video call. “We analyzed the whole team again and discussed what’s important for us. Now, when promoting employees, we’re so much more detailed and focused.”

Esentri is a self-organized company, meaning it doesn’t have a traditional top-down decision-making system. The idea of getting a fair pay certification came from an employee, but Szilinski had no problem doing it. “It wasn’t a C-level decision to do that [it was] driven by employees,” he explained.

It took Szilinski a few weeks to get the data about his company back. The first analysis of his company found out that he had a gender gap of about 13%, and throughout the process was able to reduce it to half a percent (which in general terms means there is almost no pay gap). The initial findings came as a surprise to him, but doing the analysis helped him finding out the biggest part of the gap came from part-time employees, who were paid less than their full-time counterparts.

“Other cases were women, who didn’t ask for salary raises. In those cases, maybe the team leads were happy because they didn’t have to give more,” Szilinski said. With the information he had, he was able to develop more salary tiers that allowed his company to promote employees based on more specific metrics.

Esentri started with the Analyst certification, which means data from the company were analyzed. He promised Von Platen that one year later, he’d go back to go to the next certification level, which he did. Developers are in the process of closing the pay gap. The highest possible certification a company can get with FPI is Leader, which Esentri intends to get as well. As of now, only two companies have it, and they’re based in Iceland. Iceland is the world’s most gender-equal country and has existing legislations ensuring equal pay.

“Fair Pay metrics need to fit with the company’s culture. They are flexible, which is very important,” Von Platen said.

FPI’s process does not only look at the gender pay gap but also at diversity in general. To determine the best way of improving a company’s standard, she works with them to determine what the management prioritizes — not just its pay scale.

“When they do the analysis what happens is they see black on white, not only the pay gaps, but all the details around pay and where the women are on the career ladders,” Von Platen said.

Von Platen’s favorite moment, she says with a smile, is when company leaders realize what the gaps are in their company.

“Then they work on it and they actually figure out it's not so expensive and it's fun,” Von Platen said.

In a job market currently competitive for employers to get the best talents, Szilinski believes that getting a fair pay certificate is one way of attracting some of the best talents. He also says his company’s retention rate has improved since going through the process.

“I do not only recommend other companies to do it, but I beg them to do that,” he said. “We’ve learned so much more about that, our values, understanding of fairness and transparency. We wanted to create a system that’s not toxic but helpful to people. Any company that goes full disclosure needs to develop a full understanding of why they are there, and what values they focus on. Any company that starts the process will be [advanced] in the war for talents.”