chaosophist (kay-os-o-fist)
Chaosophistication – the subtle art of change
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Transparency is good, but scary
Is Victoria pulling her weight at work?
Recently I posed the question to my LinkedIn network, "What do you think about an open Salary policy, total transparency in compensation at a company that is less than 40 people, is this a good idea? Or a recipe for disaster?" The response was an overwhelmingly...
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD IDEA.
But i cannot believe how much a firecracker this quesiton was. So many people felt compelled to answer it.
It seems like people think that Salary Inequality and transparency are like Priests and child abuse scandals, let's not talk about it, and let's just accept that it happens.
If we address it by making it public, it will destroy us.
I find this attitude puzzling. So do a few other people.
Alexander Kjerulf, Penelope Trunk
At Ignite, we didn't have a total transparency policy, I mean, we didn't post salaries on the intranet...but we did talk about them openly, and every one knew the overhead rates, and the billing rates. I though that helped, especially when it came time to talk about pay cuts due to falling revnues. But hey, our pay scale was pretty fair, and was closely tied to billing rates, so it was easier. But I first thought of this 6 years ago...when the Boeing Air Traffic Management division was laid off. The Company president went through the overhead rates in explicit detail. I found this had a huge impact on how people felt about the decision. It didn' t help if you were one of the ones getting laid off, but it did make clear that the reductions were not just management whims in a stcok market slump
Besides ! Also, if Suze Orman is in favor of it, it can't be that evil and scary ? Actually 1 of the comments privately messaged me that it migh have a positive impact on Gender Inequality in Salary. If that turns out to be provable, what more reason do you need. Its not just "unfotunate" if you have Gender Inequality going on in Salary. In the United States, it's illegal. Eliminating illegal practice through transparency is probably worth having to work hard to define a fair and equitable compensation strategy.
One colleuague, (a european whose family comes from a former Soviet Block state) even told me it was Communist! Since when, did open and transparent equate to Soviet Totalitarian Communism?
--baffled.
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biz-technologist, data lover who dotes on his family, plays with tech. Europhile, travel junkie, startup-addict, CTO @ Flextrip (Tours & Activities Tech); Founding CTO of Everbread (Travel Search Tech).
