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Equity work that focuses only on outcomes will always feel like correction. The baselines themselves have to be set equitably, otherwise the rest of the work is patching over a structure that produces inequity by default. On this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, Britteny Soto walks through what it takes to set equitable baselines in pay, promotion, and process design and why this is the most useful equity work most companies have not started.
Britteny's perspective comes from rebuilding the foundations of HR programs that had drifted into inequity. The pattern is consistent. The baselines were set in environments that did not produce equitable outcomes, the rest of the operating model inherited the baselines, and any equity work downstream had to fight the gravity of the original design. The fix is to reset the baselines.
Here is what setting equitable baselines looks like across the operating model.
Why Inequitable Baselines Compound Across Years
Pay bands set in inequitable conditions compound. Promotion criteria built around historical patterns reinforce them. Performance rubrics calibrated against the existing demographic produce uneven outcomes. According to McKinsey diversity and inclusion findings, the companies that produce sustained equity outcomes have addressed the baselines themselves rather than treating equity as an outcome correction.
The compounding is mechanical. Each year of inequitable baselines produces another year of inequitable outcomes, which then become the data that informs the next round of baselines. The cycle continues until somebody intervenes at the baseline layer. structured pay equity audits audits are part of that intervention.
How HR Teams Set Equitable Baselines in Practice
How do you reset inequitable pay baselines?
Through structured pay equity audits, by-job-family analysis, and explicit corrections where the audit finds gaps. The work is mechanical and produces measurable outcomes. The companies that take it seriously see the gap close over a few cycles.
How do you reset inequitable promotion criteria?
By auditing the criteria themselves, removing requirements that correlate with the existing demographic but not with the work, and rebuilding the criteria around what the role actually requires. Most promotion criteria have inherited assumptions that the audit surfaces.
What Actually Works in Setting Equitable Baselines
Audit the baselines, not just the outcomes
Outcome audits surface gaps. Baseline audits surface the structural cause. The structural cause is what the equity work has to address. Outcome correction without baseline reset produces patching.
Tie corrections to specific structural changes
When the audit finds an inequitable pay band, fix the band. When the audit finds an inequitable promotion criterion, rewrite the criterion. The structural change is what makes the correction durable.
Use ER infrastructure to monitor
HR case management software reports show whether the new baselines are producing equitable outcomes. The visibility is what allows the company to catch drift before it compounds again.
The pattern the guest describes on this episode lines up with broader research. The SHRM research on the future of work reinforces the operating-model lens and gives HR leaders a useful reference for grounding the conversation in numbers their CEOs and CFOs already trust. It also surfaces the same gap between stated culture priorities and how People work actually runs inside most organizations.
Where Employee Relations Fits
ER work runs into baseline inequity continuously. Discrimination claims, retaliation issues, and pay disputes all surface in the ER function. The way they are handled either reinforces the inequitable baselines or signals that the baselines are being addressed.
employee relations operations programs that integrate baseline audits with case management produce stronger outcomes. anonymous reporting infrastructure keeps the channels open for the employees most exposed to baseline-driven inequity.
How does AllVoices support baseline equity work in ER?
AllVoices gives ER teams the documentation and pattern detection that lets baseline issues surface across cases. The visibility is what allows leadership to address the structural causes rather than handle each case in isolation.
The pattern across AllVoices customers is consistent. ER teams that operate on a single workflow handle more cases at higher quality with the same headcount. The structured intake reduces the time between an employee raising a concern and the case being triaged. The case management layer keeps the documentation tight so investigations hold up to legal and audit review. The reporting layer surfaces the patterns leadership needs to act on structural issues rather than handling each case in isolation. That combination is what lets People teams treat ER as a strategic function rather than a reactive one.
Frequently Asked Questions About Setting Equitable Baselines
What is an equitable baseline in HR?
An equitable baseline is the structural starting point for pay, promotion, or process decisions, set in conditions that do not propagate existing inequity. Baselines are the layer that determines whether downstream outcomes are equitable by default.
Why do inequitable baselines compound over years?
Because each year of inequitable baselines produces another year of inequitable outcomes, which then inform the next round of baselines. The cycle continues until somebody intervenes at the baseline layer.
How do you reset inequitable pay baselines?
Through structured pay equity audits, by-job-family analysis, and explicit corrections where the audit finds gaps. The companies that take it seriously see the gap close over a few cycles.
How do you reset inequitable promotion criteria?
By auditing the criteria, removing requirements that correlate with the existing demographic but not with the work, and rebuilding the criteria around what the role actually requires.
How does ER work intersect with baseline equity?
ER cases involving discrimination, retaliation, or pay disputes often surface baseline inequity. The infrastructure has to support the connection between case-level data and baseline-level structural change.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Setting equitable baselines is the highest-impact equity work most People teams have not started. The audits are mechanical, the corrections are durable, and the outcomes show up in the demographic data over a few cycles.
Britteny's framing in the episode is that equity work that does not address the baselines is patching. The patching can produce visible activity. It does not produce sustained change. The baseline reset is what does.
For HR leaders working through this from a broader operations angle, the AllVoices references on workplace equity practice and equity versus equality framing cover the adjacent ground in more depth. Both are useful companions to the conversation in this episode.
The conversation in this episode underlines a pattern AllVoices has seen across hundreds of People teams. Programming alone does not move the operating model. The structural work, the manager development, the ER infrastructure, and the listening cycles that close visibly are what produce the outcomes the company can actually measure. That is the work the function will be evaluated on over the next several years, and the People leaders who do it well will keep earning bigger seats at the table. For HR teams looking to start, the move that pays off fastest is usually the operational one. Audit one process this quarter. Pick the structural change with the highest impact. Build the documentation around it. Close the loop with employees so they can see what changed and why. The compound effect of doing that consistently across a year is bigger than any single program initiative. The People teams that take this approach end up running cultures that hold up under stress and operating models that the rest of the C-suite trusts. That is the standard the function is moving toward, and the AllVoices customer base is full of teams already getting there.
If you want to see how AllVoices supports the ER infrastructure for baseline equity work, you can request a walkthrough. Book a tour of AllVoices.
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