I got a pay rise, but it’s still less than others earn. Is this right?

Each week, Dr Kirstin Ferguson tackles questions on workplace, career and leadership in her advice column, Got a Minute? This week: poor performers, celebrations for all and intergenerational relations.

After returning from 18 months (largely unpaid) maternity leave earlier this year, someone in leadership told me my salary needed to be adjusted up. They said I wasn’t receiving anything close to other people doing the same role and that my salary was an outlier on their spreadsheets. During my most recent salary review I did receive a modest pay rise, but I was told my pay was still below parity ‘because of market factors’. My performance review was very positive. This seems unfair, but is it allowed?

Your employer needs to sort this out with you as soon as possible unless they want to lose a good employee. The leader who spoke to you probably did so without authority to do so, but regardless the cat is out of the bag. First things first, if your company has more than 100 employees, they will have submitted a report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) where you can search the WGEA Data Explorer. This will provide you information about salaries in your company and industry.

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Once you have that data (or even without the data if your company is less than 100 employees), arrange to meet with HR or your supervisor to advise you are concerned you are being impacted by a lack of gender pay equity. You can explain what you were told by the leader about your salary being an outlier, and you feel this is still the case. The reasoning of “market factors” could mean anything, so ask why you are being impacted by this and what plan there is to ensure you are being paid an equal wage for doing the same job as others. If nothing changes, you can also seek advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman to understand your rights.

My team and I have levels of oversight which makes us feel we are not trusted. A leader I work with insists on referring everything we do to our in-house lawyers for review. As far as possible we try to keep the other leader distracted, or exclude them altogether, however some involvement is unavoidable. How do I build trust that the subject-matter expert in our team is enough?

It is frustrating for anyone to feel they are being micromanaged, and it sounds like you and your team can’t understand why the involvement of lawyers might be necessary. Without knowing the circumstances of your business I wonder if something has happened in the past which exposed the company to risks requiring this process. It is not uncommon for legal teams to review contracts, agreements or anything that might expose the company to risk and this is often for good reason.

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Meet with the leader who is causing the greatest challenge to understand what is driving their insistence on checking everything. Go into that conversation with genuine curiosity to see why the company, or perhaps this leader specifically, wants to make sure your team’s work is always reviewed. This might help you to understand the process, or, it might also help you offer reasons why some of their concerns can be allayed.