I know that I’m paid quite a few thousand less than collegues who do the same job as me. I can hardly walk in and demand that I’m paid the same, can I?

If I had a full-time job on my daily rate I’d be a very happy man, but as it is the work is sporadic and insecure (although I realise many full-timers are also in a similar position these days).
Oh and if you want to get a rough idea of what someone earns, just start moaning about how much tax you are paying, if they share the anger then it’s an indication they are in the 40% band.

Not always but it might take 5 years or more, the higher the pay the harder it is to adjust. Giving a graduate starter a 25% or 50% pay rise is relatively cheap. When you have senior engineers on over 6 figures, it gets a bit more tricky…..

The last place I worked (small public sector organisation), most pay rises were absolute amounts – £1k cost of living, £10k promotion etc.

Now (FTSE 100 company) it’s all proportional – x% bonus, 10% for new job etc, so if you come in on a lower base you’ll never catch up to someone who potentially has exactly the same career.

if you come in on a lower base you’ll never catch up to someone who potentially has exactly the same career

Amen to that.

I’d love nothing more than to stay with the company I’m currently on. However, I’m of the opinion that in a good company you’d not have to threaten to leave, or wait for some arbitrary date to increase your pay. If wishes were unicorns right?

I still wonder what my senior is going to do with the knowledge though. I’ll see him again soon and I’m going to ask him what he gets paid. I’ve got a good idea, but I just want to see how he will respond to the question.

My bosses-bosses-boss is on to earn £5.6m this year apparently.

I’d have a punt at his job for that!

Footflaps, that’s all benefits to the employer to keeping pay secret, what’s in it for the employees?

Ignorance is bliss.

If you found out that the chap next to you, doing the same job earned 50% more than you, would it make you happy? No.

Happy? No. Move to somewhere that provides adequate remuneration? Yes.

I do think a lot of gender inequality on pay isn’t helped by the British attitude to disclosing what they get.

If someone does the same work and produces the same value to the company as me they should be paid the same amount, it shouldn’t really be decided by my ability to negotiate a better deal with an employer, the fact my boss likes me more or my gender.

I’d love nothing more than to stay with the company I’m currently on. However, I’m of the opinion that in a good company you’d not have to threaten to leave, or wait for some arbitrary date to increase your pay. If wishes were unicorns right?

Likewise. Am looking at a career change within the business I work, but the challenge will be that pay doesn’t move. At the same time, I’ve just been approached about 3 jobs in what I already do that will pay me up to 50% (basic) more than I’m on now.

I know they want to keep me here, so I need to work out a way to have my cake and eat it. Because I’m worth it.

Happy? No. Move to somewhere that provides adequate remuneration? Yes.

Define adequate…

Eg Here is a real scenario. We were recruiting into a start up in 2000/2001 around the time of the big tech crash in the US (Enron, Worldcom etc). Prior to the crash we had to buy people out of their current jobs ie offer pay rises and perks to get them to join us. Then suddenly loads of UK companies (funded by US parents) were folding in Cambridge and laying off staff. So the salary we needed to pay to get someone to join had just dropped. The upshot is you ended up with a company where what you were paid had a lot to do with whether you joined pre or post crash. Everyone joined of their free will and was happy to accept their package.

Cheers bokonon – pretty impressive.

Simply say for what I do.. Clearly not enough !

Simply say for what I do…clearly too much!

Weirdly I just spoke to a potential employer who told me I wasn’t earning enough. Well…great…give me the job and pay me more and we will both be happy…?

Define adequate…

Difficult, but I’d have a go.

Find the median and the average salaries for people with similar qualifications, years of service/experience. Try and see if you can establish a baseline using that. Trigger a review for anyone say, 10% off either way?

bruneep – you a crew manager or a watch manager ?

CM, it’s out there in public domain at £31,892. I work weekends, nights unsociable hrs for no extra payments. More and more skills being added to my role with no extra payment or bonus either.

On the plus side I get to deal with the general public who love to inform me that they pay my wages whilst hurling abuse at me.

Whilst you get to hide under the stairs for weeks on end. 😉

Define adequate…

Eg Here is a real scenario. We were recruiting into a start up in 2000/2001 around the time of the big tech crash in the US (Enron, Worldcom etc). Prior to the crash we had to buy people out of their current jobs ie offer pay rises and perks to get them to join us. Then suddenly loads of UK companies (funded by US parents) were folding in Cambridge and laying off staff. So the salary we needed to pay to get someone to join had just dropped. The upshot is you ended up with a company where what you were paid had a lot to do with whether you joined pre or post crash. Everyone joined of their free will and was happy to accept their package.

In that scenario it is still in the employees best interest to know. What they do with the information is up to them. But if sallaries are still supressed in the sector then there is bugger all they can do about it.

As an employee all you want to know is that you are getting paid at what the company values you at, not the least they can get away with. You want to be happy there isn’t money on the table. In the current state of secrecy the only way to achive this is to threaten to leave or actually leave. This is not a nice place to be.

But if you knew what others doing your role were getting then you have another route to this position of satisfaction. You can say “so and so is getting more, can I have it?” The employer can always say no and if there is a reasonable reason for it (such as “I could hire another techy tomorrow for less than you are on due to the lack of jobs in the sector”) then people will accept that.

Openness is always better.

Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance drives resentment.

Ignorance = “Why can bob afford a flash car and a big house when I can’t even though we do the same job”. In the absence of information people make their own assumptions.

Secrecy just means a company can pay you the minimum they can get away with without having to justify it.

As an employee all you want to know is that you are getting paid at what the company values you at, not the least they can get away with.

YES!

This is what I’ve been trying to get across. It feels exploitative for lack of a lesser term. I don’t struggle to make ends meet, but what I’m paid and what I should be paid is the difference between SLX and XT!

As an employee all you want to know is that you are getting paid at what the company values you at, not the least they can get away with.

Aren’t these the same in a free market?

Aren’t these the same in a free market?

No – They are quite different.

They may currently pay you £20,000. But they may be willing to pay you £25,000 rather than you leave the company. This means that you are worth £25,000 but only get paid £20,000.

They won’t offer up that £5k freely and it is in their interest to conceal the fact that they are willing to pay this extra £5k. One way to conceal this is to prevent the person they are paying the £25,000 from telling the person they aren’t.

The justification for concealing pay levels being that it generates resentment is false logic. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Paying people less than they are worth is both the root cause of resentment and the root cause of the want to conceal pay levels.

Far sighted businesses recognise this, pay people what they are justifiably worth and therefore don’t need to conceal salaries and don’t generate resentment.

This doesn’t need to mean that everyone gets paid the same, just that the company needs to be able to justify why the pay levels are different.

In your senario do the people hired earlier on the higher wage still get an anual pay rise? If so how can the company justify paying them more when it would cost less for them to leave and new people to join at a lower wage?

Maybe it’s becuase they are worth what they get paid. If so then you would expect the new people to quickly rise to that pay as they aquired the expirience rather than be kept on a lower wage. Unless their performance doesn’t warrant the higher wage, then you would expect the performance management process to reflect that lower value performance so the employee is aware of why he isn’t worth as much.

If it’s becuase the company values loyalty and therefore sees that people are being paid over the odds but accepts this is the price of being loyal then that is OK. It’s justifiable. As a newer join on a lower wage I would rather work for a company that valued loyalty over one that didn’t. I’m going to get paid the same either way since I’m getting the going rate for a new join in my industry.

But all of this requires openness. Something organisations are scared of.

In your senario do the people hired earlier on the higher wage still get an anual pay rise?

Generally yes. In good times (i.e. not the last 4 years) everyone generally expects and gets an inflation related adjustment to maintain purchasing power. If you didn’t do this, people would be unhappy.

If so how can the company justify paying them more when it would cost less for them to leave and new people to join at a lower wage?

It never costs less to replace someone. There is a huge cost in loss of continuity, bringing a new person up to speed can take months.

This concept of ‘what you are worth’ or ‘what the company values you at’. It’s not really like that as if you were really paid what you are worth then you’d accept that your pay would vary daily, like stocks and shares do as the company / market changes. E.g. if the product line you work on starts to dip in sales, you could argue your ‘real worth’ is falling and expect a pay cut.

In reality salaries are more like fixed rate mortgages, you take the best offer you can get at the time but you know that someone else might get a better deal if they hang around longer and change jobs later etc.

But salaries are not entirely like mortgages because they are linked to how skilled you are at your job and that can vary.

If I spend money on improving my house, I enjoy the benefits of the improvement and I get a share of the profits if the house’s value goes up. However, if my employer does not increase my remuneration when my skills improve then they alone benefit from it in the form of increased productivity/profits. I could also be negatively affected by improvements if my employer uses it to increase my workload. For now I will be performing more work for the same remuneration.

Perhaps salaries should be considered to be more in line with a share price?

Minimum wage here. My boss is pretty tight and won’t pay any more. Doesn’t matter what I learn or how much I improve my skillset, I don’t expect to earn more than minimum wage.

I suspect most people wouldn’t reveal on here what they’re paid.

Don’t bother me – I don’t know any of you.
FWIW – I’ve just crept into the 40% bracket this year.

Generally yes. In good times (i.e. not the last 4 years) everyone generally expects and gets an inflation related adjustment to maintain purchasing power. If you didn’t do this, people would be unhappy.

Would they be less unhappy if they knew they were already earning significantly more than people in the same company doing the same job?

I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said. Salaries aren’t like shares but also who made the rule that you start on x and get x+y% a year until you get promoted or move companies?

Employers did so they can avoid paying us the maximum that they would be willing to rather than lose us.

This is not in our interest as employees and things like salary openness would allow this status quo to change. Without it we just generate resentment and high staff turnover.

Ignorance most certainly isn’t bliss.

curiousyellow

Find the median and the average salaries for people with similar qualifications, years of service/experience. Try and see if you can establish a baseline using that. Trigger a review for anyone say, 10% off either way?

That’s the way some large companies try it. It has varying success. It depends on the budget available for performance-related raises and ‘market rate adjustments’. What tends not to work is when a guide like that turns into a ‘policy’. It’s a great way to prevent hiring managers offering pay and incentives that bring the right candidates in to a department.

I don’t think I would mind if others on the same level were earning more than me so long as we all understood why. It wouldn’t have to be an answer I like but I the company said “we paid Janet 20% more than you because she is punctual and doesn’t take sickies”, then at least i would know it’s an employer that values timekeeping and either I can get with the metrics or piss off…