The Work Clinic

In my experience, individuals who put a heavy emphasis on their colleagues’ earnings tend to have questionable values. I can only see this website becoming a forum for such individuals, with the result that it will create unnecessary concerns, accusations and potentially bad feeling within a workforce and that can’t be any good for morale or productivity.

At CBSbutler, as recruiters, we deal with many organisations and I have seen time and time again that good employers are those who understand that there has to be a degree of parity and consistency within staff remuneration, but that there will always be exceptions because of business

As the saying goes, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. In this case, a salary is only part of the reward jigsaw, and for a colleague to know just this part may be misleading and not give the true picture about a colleague’s entire remuneration compared to their own. For example, two colleagues may be incentivised differently, one having the potential to earn far more then the other in bonuses. One may be participating in the company’s long term incentive plan, the other not.

Many companies now operate with a number of pension plan offerings in place, having had to close their final salary pension schemes to new joiners, for example. One longer serving manager may be on a lower basic salary but is a member of a non-contributory final salary pension scheme; another on a higher basic salary but contributes to a defined contribution scheme.

A colleague’s true basic pay can also be distorted if flexible benefits or salary sacrifice arrangements are in place, or, a colleague chooses to participate in all employee share plans, lowering the actual amount of take home pay.

The challenge is to ensure fairness, consistency and equity in varying reward structures across the employee population. However HR can ensure they get ahead of any feedback from ‘glass door’ contributors in their organisation by promoting Total Reward Statements – to increase employees’ understanding of the range and value of their remuneration, and to comprehend the relative weight of the basic salary within the package. Employees should then realise that ‘glass door’ is nothing more than a chance to have a lighthearted peek at colleagues’ salaries, and not to attach any weight to the data but appreciate instead there may be many reasons why their colleague’s salary is different from their own.

In practice most employees joining an organisation have a good idea how how well it pays relative to the market. Even if the pay is lower quartile, a positive decision to join may well have been taken based on other factors.

As people gain additional skills, they begin to wonder whether their pay remains competitive at the initial level. Unsatified curiosity can easily become disatisfaction leading either to low motivation or to staff applying for jobs elsewhere. If this curiosity can be positively satisfied, it can reduce staff turnover.

As the new Equality Bill is likely to increase employees' access to such information anyway, it may be better to accept that we live in a world where information is shared more freely than has historically been the case and consider how that can best be used to help the employers we advise / serve.

Kate

Information to the masses, the more information we have the more empowered we are so no harm and all gain from glassdoor