I recall a training program some years back where one of the consultants running it was very surprised that we had a ‘keep quiet’ rule on salaries. Their belief was that transparency reduced the perceived differentials in pay and made it possible for folks to instead focus on why their pay might be different. Clearly if you think you’re being paid unfairly you can then consider doing something about it.

Aside from the English discomfort with sharing financial information I guess there’s a fear that a sudden rush of transparency can be disruptive for the reasons that folks have already cited: new people getting more than long stayers, people apparently getting more money for less effort,…

My pay is not on line. When we advertise for my replacement the salary and benefits might not even be mentioned. Most jobs we’re advertising now have nothing about packages. We aim to be competitive I suspect.

I’ve had no problem discussing my salary since I’ve been in the public sector – i can’t influence/negotiate my salary, and pay bands are easy to find.

Interesting conversation in the pub last night around salaries. I said that my new part time hours meant that my take home would be about £10k. A couple of the with proper jobs had obviously swallowed too much Tory propaganda about Civil Service fat cats!

When we advertise for my replacement the salary and benefits might not even be mentioned. Most jobs we’re advertising now have nothing about packages. We aim to be competitive I suspect.

That’s a good point actually. I get really vexed with job adverts that give you a big long list of what they want and no indication whatsoever as to what they’re offering in return. It hadn’t occurred to me that it might be to prevent existing employees being disgruntled (but then again, do I want to work for a company which needs to hide its salaries due to pay discepancies?).

Channel 4 did an interesting show called ‘show me your money’ a few years ago, can’t find any link to the full episode, only clips but basically the boss at Pimlico plumbers got all the employees to tell each other what their salaries were in order to create a fairer system, but without upping the payroll budget. Everyone from boss man on a million a year, down to the office cleaner on minimum wage, who had about 4p disposable income a month. Lots of questions like does a cleaner work 20% as hard as the marketing guy in £60k a year and why there were 10k diferences in people who did the same jobs wages, but if they wanted to give someone more money, someone had to take a pay cut, I think one dept had a whip-round so they could pay one lad a bit more, and £60k a year marketing man gave up a grand a year to give the cleaning lady an extra k. Lots of pissed off people though iirc

…new people getting more than long stayers…

I can appreciate people getting paid more based on performance, meeting targets, or whatever. I’m not sure it’s entirely right, but I reckon there’s probably good arguments either way. I’ve worked with colleagues who have been on higher wages doing the same job, it’s never really bothered me too much.

Newcomers getting paid more than experienced staff who know their job well (and in the vast majority of cases work much more efficiently). That seems almost criminal to me, and should be exposed. People would be right to kick off about that.

butcher – Member

Newcomers getting paid more than experience staff who know their job well (and in the vast majority of cases work much more efficiently). That seems almost criminal to me, and should be exposed. People would be right to kick off about that.

You can look at it 2 ways (well- actually it’s the same thing, viewed from 2 different angles). Either it’s sensible because attracting new staff is harder than retaining old staff, and therefore good business; or it’s abusing staff loyalty and desire for stability, and therefore disgusting.

Actually it’s both at the same time, good business is often disgusting. But most folks don’t like that so they’ll go to one or the other.

Secrecy over wages is a fig-leaf to cover up management cronyism and incompetence, that weakens the ability of the workforce to negotiate a fair settlement.

Why shouldn’t new comers get more salary wise than long termers? If I need to employ new people to work for me, I want the best person for the job and if that means paying a decent wack then so be it. Conversely, if someone isn’t happy with their pay, they know they can talk to me about increasing it and we can see what’s possible.

I don’t care what my peers are paid, what I care about is that I’m fairly compensated for the work I do. If I’m not paid enough I’ll look elsewhere, plenty of jobs about.

thecaptain – Member
Secrecy over wages is a fig-leaf to cover up management cronyism and incompetence, that weakens the ability of the workforce to negotiate a fair settlement.

Also what I earn is none of your business, I’ve been in positions where I’ve been on a better deal compared to others but there were good reasons. Some days you need to do what you can to get the best people to achieve your goals.

tomhoward : That was a good program, if i remember correctly some of the plumbers were taking in upwards of £90k a year

flange – Member

Why shouldn’t new comers get more salary wise than long termers? If I need to employ new people to work for me, I want the best person for the job and if that means paying a decent wack then so be it.

So when you hired the last person, were they not the best person for the job?

what I care about is that I’m fairly compensated for the work I do

How can you judge what is fair if your only knowledge of salary is your own?

Having run departments and set salaries, it’s a complicated subject. People join at different times on different salaries with different skill sets. After a while you realise you have two equivalent team members on different salaries, but the allocated pay rise budget might only be a few % across a whole department, so to correct an anomaly could wipe out the annual pay rise budget for that department, leaving nothing for the annual % ride for inflation etc. For most companies pay roll can by one of the biggest costs, so you can’t just fix things instantly. Salary discrepancies are never intentional (or not where I’ve worked) they just occur naturally and take a long time to resolve.

Salary discrepancies are never intentional

True but the moment the guy managing you realises that you earn more than him is a beautiful thing 😉

True but the moment the guy managing you realises that you earn more than him is a beautiful thing

He’d normally know when he hired you?

I’ve managed people on a lot more than me, but they were exceptionally good and worked longer hours than I did – so definitely earned it.

no the senior boss did the contracts, was a move around that ended up with that happy situation, we did joke about it over a beer later after the department had a pay shake up

I see what you’re saying NW, but the people in my team all do quite specific jobs – I don’t have a group of people all doing the same thing. For example if I need a developer with the ability to take requirements from business users, normally I’d look to an ex consultant who are normally paid more than end user roles. This all said I do try to make sure everyone is paid similar – we don’t have job banding which makes it difficult but if someone is significantly lower than the others I’ll do my best to bring them up to the average.

Regarding my salary, I look at job boards and I’ve been in enough roles to know my ‘worth’. im happy with my lot, the company I work for is a really nice company so I’m content with what I have. I’m quite fortunate in that what I do isn’t industry specific so I can pick one of the areas where pay is better – What I do can vary up to 30k a year based purely on the fact it’s pharma rather than say logistics.