about it. There were some
fears that people had around
what may happen once their
salary is public for the world
to see and know. Today at
Buffer, internal pay
transparency is incredibly
important and something we
don’t deviate from. But when
it comes to public
transparency, we now allow
team members to opt out, for
example, if there are personal
safety concerns.”
It’s not easy, he adds, but it’s
worth it: “Pay transparency,
like many other forms of
transparency, requires extra
work. It takes time to create a
clear and fair compensation
system, and it requires
maintenance and expansion
over time (we’ve had several
iterations of our formula).
Arguably the company could
move faster on certain
initiatives, and perhaps even
have higher growth, at least in
the short term, if we didn’t
hold ourselves to the level of
transparency we do. However,
when you take a long-term
mindset, it is an easy decision
to put in the effort. It breeds
trust by removing any ability
to use control of data to hold
power, and by opening up all
the information for anyone to
question. It enables
innovation by ensuring that
the whole team has all the
information at their disposal
to make key decisions –
usually only top-level
executives have all the cards.
It leads to fairness and
greater justice by inviting any
team member and the greater
public to question or call us
out on our compensation
system.”
After Gascoigne took the
decision to go transparent, he
reported a huge increase in the
number and quality of
applicants to Buffer. This is key,
says Sir Cary Cooper, professor
of organisational psychology
and health at Manchester
Business School: simply telling
people what they are paid in
relation to their colleagues is
not enough. It has to lead to
something more. Asked if pay
transparency is, psychologically
speaking, a good thing, he
heaves a big sigh.
“I think it would be a good
thing if the transparency also
led to openness,” he says. “If
the organisation had
managers who were open to
people coming to them to do
discuss, openly, their ownvalue and worth and fairness.
If they have that kind of
culture, I think it could work.
If they don’t, then I think it
might cause conflict and
problems.”
For Belogolovsky, too,
transparency in itself can only
be part of the solution: “I
believe that the real issue is
not whether pay should be
transparent or not but rather
whether the compensation
system is equitable, well
managed and well
communicated. Neither a
transparent pay policy where
employees can compare
salaries nor pay secrecy is a
solution for an unfair system.
In practice, however, at least
some degree of pay
transparency is necessary in
order to convince employees
that the organisation’s
compensation system is
equitable and fair.”A Emotional impact
The less fashionable, arguably
more realistic approach to
this question is to recognise
the true impact that revealing
this kind of information
might have. Robyn Vesey
from Tavistock Consulting
says we need to think about
how an organisation’s systems
and structures can affect its
employees psychologically,
and the impact our
unconscious motivations and
processes have on our work
and our colleagues. The
question of who gets paid
what in relation to whom
brings up extremely complex
feelings, she says: “It’s about
numbers and it’s about more
than numbers. Who deserves
what is such a key anxiety of
our age, whether you’re
talking about claiming
benefits or pay in high
level jobs.”“At a psychological level,
there is always a
consequence of sharing
information that is irrational
as well as rational.”
ABOVE: At Buffer, which
develops and sells social media
tools, a policy of complete
pay transparency has been
introduced.LEFT: Would you be happy with
your payslip being open to public
scrutiny?