October 3, 2007
A recent post on the excellent Evil HR Lady blog struck a chord with Guru.
For those of you unfamiliar with Evil HR Lady's work, she is a kind of human resources agony aunt. The Claire Rayner of HR, if you like. Employees write to her with their problems and she solves them.
(Guru once had the most bizarre Sunday lunch with Claire Rayner, Jasper Carrott-sidekick Robert Powell, perma-tanned travel-show presenter Judith Chalmers and the late, great Stannah Stairlift promoter Dame Thora Hird, but that's a long story for another day.)
Anyway, some poor soul recently sought Evil HR Lady's advice on the subject of salary. The complainant had inadvertently seen a document on the boss's computer screen listing the salaries of everyone in the company, and realised that someone else working at their level was earning $20,000 more.
Guru doesn't have to cast his mind back far to a day when he spotted a similar list on the desk of his HR manager. He managed to engage the HR manager in some polite smalltalk, while simultaneously memorising every last name and number on the page.
And you know what, he now desperately wishes he hadn't. For now he risks confusing salary with value. Whenever Guru comes across anyone who was listed on that page, he recalls what they are paid and where they sit in the pecking order, making immediate comparisons. It's totally distracting - does anyone know a good hypnotist?
Guru's father (Guru Senior) was absolutely right when he told a young Guru-ling: "If anyone offers to swap details of your respective pay and benefits, immediately decline. One of you will inevitably end up feeling rotten."
See - Guru can do advice too!
Interestingly, Evil HR Lady advocates an open compensation strategy, which is great for transparency and for avoiding the sorts of problems outlined above.
Guru much prefers going for secrecy and suspicion, as an atmosphere of mistruct can be useful in leveraging discretionary effort.
Evil HR Lady's other point, that salary discrepancy may have something to do with length of service (or tenure for our US friends) raises further interesting questions, not least in this era of (UK) age discrimination legislation.
If the complainant was in this country and confronted the boss with this salary discrepancy, the organisation may need to point to something other than age and length of service to justify the differential - or face an age discrimination claim.
Can open, worms everwhere.
Comments (2)
Thora Hird advertised Churchill stairlifts, not Stannah, as any fule kno.
Posted by Mark | October 3, 2007 8:39 AM
Posted on October 3, 2007 08:39
Guru much prefers going for secrecy and suspicion, as an atmosphere of mistrust can be useful in leveraging discretionary effort.
That line made me laugh. It's very true.
Posted by Evil HR Lady | October 5, 2007 12:10 PM
Posted on October 5, 2007 12:10