Pay equity—compensating employees the same when they perform the same or similar duties while considering legitimate job-related factors—is intended to help close the wage gap that still persists among groups of workers who have been historically underpaid.

While pay equity has been regulated on a federal level for decades through the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, states are stepping up their attention to the matter with a number of laws in recent years that provide even further protections such as:

Retaining talent is the top organizational concern this year according to an isolved survey of 1,000 HR-decision makers. These same decision-makers say employees’ increasing expectations for the experiences they have at work is the biggest threat facing retention.

Although increasing employee expectations can be driven by external factors (like what employees see on social media and the consumer experiences they have outside of work), total compensation still plays a critical role. In fact, HR decision-makers say competitive compensation and competitive benefits are the top two investments that can be made to deliver employee experiences that matter.