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INTERACTIVE EXERCISE
Problem Statement
Jane Stillwell is a Petroleum Engineer working for an Oil & Gas Exploration Company. The company has revenues of $1 billion. She is located at a facility in Bakersfield, California. Jane is 33 years old and has been working as a Petroleum Engineer for 6 years. She became a Petroleum Engineer after finishing her education and qualifying 10 years ago. However, after two years on the job she became pregnant and quit working while she stayed home with her daughter. She returned to work 4 years ago.
Seems like old times
Recently, she attended a professional conference held in Houston, Texas. While there, she ran into an old classmate, Jim Turner. Jim graduated and qualified at the same time as Jane. She discovered that he also had gone to work for the same company, but works from their Berkeley, California office.
After having what was overall a pleasant reunion, Jane found herself very angry, not at Jim but at her employer. It seems that during the evening Jim disclosed that his base salary is $231,200 per year. She is angry because her base salary is $170,800. Jim’s base salary is much more than hers. She is feeling discriminated against.
Official complaint
Upon returning to Bakersfield, Jane immediately contacted her supervisor regarding this problem. He sent her on to Human Resources with her complaint.
As the Human Resource specialist, you must determine if this is a case of pay discrimination. Upon investigation of both persons' personnel records, you find obvious differences in:
- physical location
- years of service
- performance levels
Jim's performance ratings are very high putting him in the 80th percentile. Jane's performance is good and places her at the 60th percentile.
Now use ERI's Salary Assessor tool to find out if these differences warrant the salary differential, according to competitive labor market data.
Click on the Load Step-by-Step button to begin.