Human Resources Conferences

Equity is the fair treatment and equality of access to opportunity, information and resources for all. Equity and fairness are critical to employee experience, and are built by identifying and eliminating unfair biases, stereotypes or barriers that may inadvertently exclude underrepresented employees. Organizations are increasingly using equity to describe priorities and programs. Attending a human resource conference like ReimagineHR 2023 is an excellent way to reimagine your own organizations' human resource management strategies.

While both equality and equity are important, and may relate to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategy, HR professionals need to clarify each term and clearly distinguish the two before promoting them. Some organizations may even be surprised to discover employees may be treated equally but not equitably. That’s because organizations often strive for workplace equal outcomes by treating everyone the same. Workplace equality gives every employee access to the same opportunities; but workplace equity means the fair treatment and equality of access to opportunities, information and resources for all.

Attending Gartner HR conferences 2023 will help HR leaders assess their own organizations’ DEI policies.

In practice, when employees all work in the same inflexible policies and processes with little consideration of varying needs, employees may actually be experiencing a distinctly unfair work environment. An equity strategy aims to “level the playing field” and ensure all employees feel psychologically safe enough to participate and contribute.

Fairness, equal access and equal opportunity are critical to improving the employee experience as workforce models change. For decades, work design has been based on inherited assumptions that have damaging implications for equity, innovation and performance. 

Over the past couple years, more and more businesses have started talking about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) instead of just diversity and inclusion (D&I). The social upheavals that have taken place over the past year have made inequity harder to ignore, whether within organizations, communities or society writ large. That’s why Gartner HR conferences have an entire track dedicated to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Business leaders face growing moral pressure to combat inequity from governments, activists, media and (most importantly) their own employees. Inclusion, equity and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues go beyond employment law and are all becoming bigger talent management priorities, prompting the question: “How do we ensure our organization is profitable and high-performing, and how do we do it in a way that is fair and equitable?”

It’s all too common for HR professionals to see these two aspirations as part of a zero-sum game or conflicting conditions, but some of the smartest organizations are wondering if performance and equity actually work together. These HR professionals are asking a different question: Does fairness actually improve performance? The challenge in the coming decade for HR professionals is not to balance a moral imperative of fairness against a business imperative of growth but rather, to build cultures and processes that drive performance through equity. The Gartner HR conferences 2023 agenda will cover how HR leaders can build culture through talent strategy.

It is important to design pay strategies that drive performance through reward strategies that are fair and perceived as fair by employees, but there are other areas in which fairness and equity are critical. For example, many organizations will need to ensure fairness across new models of work as employees adopt hybrid working models and become more geographically dispersed. HR professionals will also need to create new HR processes that drive business and talent outcomes in a more equitable way.

When you join Gartner HR conferences, you can attend sessions within the Total Rewards and Performance agenda track, which is filled with research-backed sessions on how to design and communicate pay and performance strategies.

HR professionals have grown accustomed to providing consistent work conditions, consistent work hours and consistent access to managers in the office and believe this consistent employee experience is a way to ensure fairness. This rationale doesn’t work in the hybrid world, where experiences almost by default will always be inconsistent from person to person. But progressive HR professionals recognize that individual experiences are consumed differently based on background, life experience and personality, so the premise that an experience could ever be equal is flawed.

Aiming for equality of experience is an outdated mode of working that was already causing harm in the office-based world. Aiming for equality of opportunity, however, is the better way to equity in the hybrid world, and this is the new principle that human-centric design must be based on. Employees can decide for themselves what their most productive and engaging work experience should be, and we must provide them the flexibility (and thus equal opportunity) to design this themselves.

At ReimagineHR Conference 2023, HR leaders will gain insights on how to further advance diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

At previous years' human resource conferences, we explored these big ideas and deliver insights to help human resources professionals:

• Design pay strategies that drive performance through reward strategies that are fair and perceived as fair by employees.
• Learn how to employ HR technology to ensure fairness across new models of work as employees adopt hybrid working styles and become more geographically diverse.
• Create new HR processes and talent acquisition strategies that drive business and talent outcomes in a more equitable way.
• Build DEI strategies that not only improve diversity and inclusion but also drive equity throughout the organization.

Keep an eye out for an updated agenda for Gartner ReimagineHR Conference 2023 to learn more about how HR leaders can continue to build upon these themes and other top priorities.

At previous years' HR conferences, human resources professionals gained access to agenda sessions addressing a wide range of HR conference topics, including the following:

• How can organizations improve fairness and employee perceptions of fairness?
• What are the positive business outcomes of a fairer workplace?
• How can HR enable personalization and radical flexibility for individuals to improve their engagement while maintaining fairness among all employees?
• How can organizations ensure benefits given to specific employee segments (e.g., extra parental support) are perceived as fair to segments that are not getting those benefits?
• How do we ensure fairness in careers and rewards among employees who are more or less likely to return to the physical workplace compared to those who continue to work from home?
• How do we ensure fairness of opportunities, recognition and promotion among a workforce that is more diverse and geographically distributed?
• What are fair pay practices for employees who move to remote, lower-cost locations?
• How can organizations balance treatment of contingent versus full-time employees in a way that drives performance for all employees in all types of work models?
• How can HR technology leaders enable our new hybrid workforce in a way that ensures fairness for everyone?
• How can talent acquisition leaders think about their talent pools now that they can hire from anywhere?
• How can talent analytics leaders better understand a remote hybrid workforce to create a new, equitable work environment?

Keep an eye out for an updated agenda for Gartner ReimagineHR Conference 2023. By attending, CHROs and HR leaders are joining in on one of the top HR conferences globally, and will get a critical update on top HR trends.