Would Disclosing the Salary Secret Explode Your Organization?

Jan 26

Photo by Opacity

Do you remember the days when car shopping was fraught with stress because when it all came down to the price you paid for the car came down to how well you negotiated?  Back in the day, all the buyer had to work from was the MSRP, which nearly everyone knew was thousands more than the car would sell for, and would it surprise you to know that pre-internet women and minorities paid on average 2% more than white men?

Would you buy a car these days without looking online at what it should be priced?

Would you buy a house without looking at the comps in the neighborhood?

Do you check the salary survey sites to see whether you’re being paid at market value?  Would you be really offended if you did and noticed that your salary and benefits package was significantly less than others with similar qualifications in your market?  How would that impact your relationship with your manager or employer once the market improved?

What brought this up for me was that I was reading an article in Entrepreneur Magazine called “The Secret is Out” in which the 24-year-old co-founder and CEO of iContact Ryan Allis thinks that disclosing salaries would “eliminate management’s advantage in the salary negotiation process.”

If you go out to some of the salary research web sites, such as Salary.com, you can see from their surveys that women and minorities get paid less for the same positions, all other things being equal.  By disclosing salaries, at the very least by demographic data, organizations would have less ability to discriminate.

What would happen in your organization if the secret got out?

Here’s my beef:  paying someone less that I would pay someone else of equal qualifications for the same work, just because I can, offends my personal values.  (It’s likely I wouldn’t make a good hiring manager at iContact, as participating in behavior that conflicts with my values causes me stress and undermines my integrity.)

As a Holder of Vision and Values™ (Best Practice 1) and a Creator of Collaboration and Innovation™ (Best Practice 2), I would not want to start out this relationship on this footing.  Creating a trusting environment starts with having the other person’s best interests at heart, as well as my own and my company’s.  That’s how I want to be known in the world.

It’s been and established part of the hiring paradigm that companies have a right to the advantage when it comes to salary.  Do you think this should continue to be true?  Why or why not?

Until next time,

Carolann

p.s. – These Best Practices for Leadership originate in the Legacy Leadership® model created by Jeannine Sandstrom and Lee Smith.  This model is the basis for our upcoming year-long leadership group coaching program.  Stay tuned for the big announcement about that!  Contact us today if you’d like to be on the contact list.

p.p.s. – This is a complicated topic in that a people have unique knowledge, experience and abilities.  What do you think about making salaries public knowledge?

Tags: Action Coach, Brain-based Coaching, business coach, Carolann Jacobs, coach, Extraordinary Results, facilitation, Inimitable Leadership, Inspired Workplace, Leadership, Legacy Leadership, Neuroleadership, neuroscience, Plasticity