Forsman & Bodenfors becomes the first gender pay equity-certified creative agency

Stagwell Inc.’s Forsman & Bodenfors has become the first creative agency to be certified by the Fair Pay Workplace for gender pay equity, having proved that it has achieved pay equity in every country and office where it operates. As part of the certification, the 400-strong agency has also committed to expressing salary ranges in job postings, starting next month. The move comes two months ahead of New York State pay transparency legislation that will require companies with more than four employees to include salary ranges in postings, starting Nov. 1. Forsman & Bodenfors is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, with offices in Stockholm, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Shanghai and Singapore. The Seattle-based Fair Pay Workplace, a non-profit set up in 2021, recognizes organizations dedicated to true and ongoing pay equity. The only organization that has created standards for pay equity, its methodology was developed by experts from law, data science, business, academia, HR, and DEI. Other organizations certified by Fair Pay Workplace so far include American Airlines, tech companies Databricks and NerdWallet, health insurance company Anthem, Sellen Construction and the University of California Irvine (UCI). Forsman & Bodenfors became the first agency to be globally certified by The 3% Movement for its efforts in to retain and promote women in 2019. Overall, 61% of its employees identify as female, as does 57% of its executive leadership team. Becoming certified for pay equity was the next step, said Michele Prota, F&B’s global chief talent officer. The move was partly prompted by questions arising from the agency's annual inclusion survey. “Questions were coming up that employees deserve the answers to, like what is our pay philosophy? And we know that we’re at a point where employees are really determining where they work based on a match of personal and company values,” Prota said. “So we put pay at the central part of our talent strategy for the year and it was a really easy decision to do that.” Validating fair pay was incredibly important, she said. “Any organization can boast that they have fair pay without any standards of measurement to back it up. We felt that in order to build trust for our employees, our clients and the industry, we wanted that stamp of certification.” During the certification process, the agency identified one department, in one city, in one of its companies with a pay discrepancy. (Prota didn’t identify the city, but did note that it was outside of the U.S.) Through its most recent salary review cycle in July, it was able to correct the inequity and meet the objectives for pay equity according to Fair Pay Workplace. F&B has now committed to five actions that are considered best in class by Fair Pay Workplace: to analyze global gender pay equity every year; internally communicate the results of each pay equity analysis; never ask applicants about previous compensation; share salary ranges in job postings and ensure ongoing pay equity through fair pay policies. According to Toby Southgate, CEO of Forsman & Bodenfors, the agency is making the move primarily for its own people. However, for its clients, which include Volvo, Oatly, Google, Goldman Sachs, Polestar, Diageo, Procter & Gamble, Crocs, LG, General Mills and H&M, “it’s just something that we’d like to be asked about,” he said. “This is an agency that works very hard and listens in detail to its people all the time,” he added. “It gets us into an interesting discussion about being different to other agencies, and this is one of the ways we feel we are different.” Southgate also said that the move to become certified was made independently from its parent Stagwell Inc. “This is not a corporate mandate. But they are proud of the achievement, and it sets a very high benchmark not only in the group but in the industry as a whole.”

Forsman & Bodenfors becomes the first gender pay equity-certified creative agency

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