Salary transparency is still rare among businesses. Many executives believe that adopting salary transparency would not result positive in their workforce, with more than half of employers (51 percent) do not share transparency and are unlikely to start the initiative. Fear of upsetting employees is by far the most commonly cited reason for not sharing salary ranges. These companies are also worried that their people will immediately ask for the high end of a salary range of becoming unhappy after seeing what other makes.
Nevertheless, Global Talent Trends report revealed that 27 percent of respondents who share pay range see positive benefits from the practice of pay transparency. According to talent professionals who practice it, pay transparency makes the hiring process more efficient by streamlining negotiations. The practice also helps ensure fair pay across gender and race which is why many governments have recently introduced equal pay law.
See also: Factor That Lies behind Gender Pay Gaps
Buffer, Glitch, Starbucks, Whole Foods, and SumAll are amongst companies that have already enacted salary transparency. Each of these companies employs different rules when it comes to wage transparency.
Buffer, for example, takes the bravest approach to pay transparency in 2013. The company made the exact salaries of all its employees public, thus, everyone including job seekers is able to see it online. The practice, however, does not come bluntly as Buffer consults its employees first. After 30 days of this move, Buffer received over twice as many applications as it had the previous month. Hailley Griffis, Head of Public Relation at Buffer, told LinkedIn that salary transparency does not only help boost trust, morale, and productivity in general. The practice also helps increase workplace happiness.
Other results of making salary figure public are that companies started to see better employer brand and help execute a gender pay gap in the workforce, as a result, employees are more motivated to compete. SumAll and Whole Foods also cited that salary transparency help their workers improve productivity and work satisfaction.
Starting this movement, advised Anil Dash, is better with the permission of your employees. Some of your people might be more comfortable with the idea and some might not. Thus, if you want to start this practice, make sure to do the following approaches when establishing pay transparency.
Conduct an internal audit to see how your pay compares to competitors and whether you have any major pay gaps across gender, race, and those in similar roles. If you find significant inequalities quickly fix them by immediate raises or changes to your promotion policies.
According to SHRM, there are three categories in this practice, namely:
Get your employees involved in the process. Share your proposed policy details and expected results with them across multiple channels. Give employees several ways to provide feedback and share concern from an anonymous survey to live Q&A.
Before rolling out pay transparency, make sure you can clearly answer what factors determine an employee’s pay, such as years of experiences or past performance. Qualify what it takes to be at the minimum, midpoint, and maximum of the pay range.
Train managers how to answer questions and explain compensation policies to make it easier for employees to have these conversations and feel good about them.
Consider sharing your plans and training managers in the first year, giving employees the salary ranges for their own roles the next year, and then sharing the ranges for all roles in the third year.
Ensure employees have all the details they need and continue to reinforce the rationale behind transparency. Tying your policies to your company’s core values can strengthen both. For instance, you can connect pay transparency to values like honesty, integrity, communication, diversity, or accountability.
Read also: More Than a Pay Hike or Promotion, Here’s What Professionals Want the Most in 2020
