Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEI&B) has always been an integral part of DockYard’s culture. We consider an inclusive environment as key to the success of our team, and it was important to us that we put real action behind that belief.
To do that, we began by creating an employee-led DEI&B group focused on the mission of the DEI&B team, which led to the creation of the three pillars of our group: Empower, Educate, and Engage.
Our latest effort folds in elements of all three pillars: As of today, DockYard is releasing our first-ever wage calculator. The calculator is the culmination of several DEI&B initiatives brought to life by members of our Design and Engineering teams. With it, anyone will be able to view DockYard’s compensation bands by role and location.
We have plans to continue building on this initial calculator–more on that below–but we’re proud of this step toward ensuring compensation transparency to help combat pay gaps in the workplace, both at DockYard and elsewhere in our industry.
Minding the (Pay) Gap
One area we paid particular attention to in our pursuit of equity is the pay gap in workplaces and how to combat that. To that end, DockYard embarked upon a path of discovering how we could ensure an equitable compensation package for all employees.
In 2020, we engaged with GoodWell to evaluate our internal equity across job roles. We made necessary adjustments based on their evaluation, but we knew this needed to be an ongoing effort and could not be a one-and-done initiative. We needed to embark upon two projects: Developing our roles and competencies, and crafting compensation bands and philosophy.
For our Roles & Competencies project, we took a deep dive into each role within the company and objectively defined the competencies, skills, and knowledge needed to be successful in each. This also allowed us to identify career paths for our team.
In coordination with that effort, the Employee Experience team began establishing compensation bands for each role. Recognizing that, as a fully distributed company, we had people living and working in any number of locations with corresponding cost of living rates, we wanted to make sure that we considered that in our internal equity efforts. We launched our Roles & Competencies throughout the company in June 2021 with a more robust version released in August 2022.
During our DEI&B Team discussions, we began to entertain whether we should publish our bands–both internally and externally. During these discussions, we published our first-ever DE&I report. The purpose of this report was to outline where we are, and where we want to go. It is our effort to put those goals out there and be accountable for them.
And We’re Not Done Yet
We’re glad to have made this first step, but we realize that it isn’t enough to say we’re committed to DEI&B. We knew we needed to put our money where our mouth is (so to speak), so we decided that not only were we going to make our bands available to our employees–we would also make them available on our website.
To do that, we’re introducing our wage calculator. To create this, we partnered with Culpepper and Associates to craft our bands using their compensation market data and pay zone analysis.
Culpepper and Associates gathers data from thousands of companies worldwide to establish their compensation data and analyzes geographic location data from multiple sources to formulate their pay zones. These pay zones take into account cost of living, industry sector, availability of talent in the local market, and the health of the local economy. It should be noted this is a work in progress and will be iterative. Case in point: In 2021 we began expanding outside of the U.S. So while we have broad ranges at the country level, we do not have the same level of geographical specificity outside of the U.S. at this time. As we continue to expand and gather more data our calculator will evolve to reflect that. Members of our Design and Engineering teams then dedicated their weekly DockYard Days-time when every DockYarder can pursue projects outside their client duties-to take our collected data and create the finished calculator.
How It Works
To use the wage calculator, simply select a role and a location, and the base compensation range will populate. Our ranges are in local currencies and only roles that we have bands established are available. We are evaluating these bands and locations regularly and while your country may not be listed currently, we already have plans to add more countries.
Within each band, employees and candidates may expect to fall within the low, mid, or high range. In general, where a candidate or employee falls within those ranges is reflective of their achievement of the competencies* aligned with their role.
Employees who are relatively new in their role can expect to fall within the lower third of the band, while those with considerable mastery of the competencies within their role can expect to fall within the top third of the band. Individuals who fall within the mid-point of competency and skill expectations of their role can expect to fall within the 25%-75% range within the band.
These bands represent our salary ranges only, they are not inclusive of any bonus potential or benefits offered by the company.
By providing this level of transparency to our employees and our candidates, DockYard hopes to do our part to help overcome the external wage gap while ensuring internal equity for our team.
* DockYard has crafted a robust Roles & Competencies matrix for each role within DockYard.
