While speaking to a smarter younger colleague about the problems that need fixing in workplaces, I realized I had entered a problem of mine own making. Number one on my list for 2020, I said, is equal pay — or the lack of it.
I told her I had been on stage at a professional women’s event recently, talking about the effectiveness — or otherwise — of the newest ideas to help advance our careers. The best “hot trend” is pay transparency, I had suggested to the 200 assembled women.
Employers are required by law to pay equal wages for equal work. How can we tell if we are getting paid equally? It is a good idea to tell each other what we earn. Knowing what your colleagues earn can be a powerful tool for negotiating pay.
Anyway, I said, What have we got at stake by being more British and honest? Who is this? omerta helping? Employers. It is liberating and liberating to be open with colleagues and friends. So I continued on, thrilled with my bravery & openness.
Smart Younger Colleague was able to be direct after listening to all of this. “So, would you be willing to tell me how much you earn?” I was shocked. Despite repeating this phrase to my 16 year-old son with wearying frequency, I hadn’t realized that actions have consequences.
SYC still asked me. So I told SYC. After she shared her pay, we both gained some knowledge. (No, I’m not going to repeat my salary. Or hers. There are no boundaries.
Such “radical pay transparency” is a relatively new term for a revolutionary-sounding practice that has long gone on in whisper networks, among friends at work, and more recently as part of a wider cultural shift to more sharing and openness, especially among female friends.
Ten years ago, no one knew what I was being paid. Now it is more common, becoming rapidly less stigmatised — and men are joining in. Even my father can tell me his pension income.
It is best to share truth about salary with people you trust and who have jobs that are similar to yours. It is also useful for freelancers or people working in the same industry to compare day rates and negotiate salary.
There are downsides of sharing. Our self-worth and our salaries are closely linked. How will it affect your self-worth if you are paid less than your peers? What if you are used against yourself? What if — as one woman at the event suggested to me afterwards — your hard-negotiated salary is used to bump up a lazy colleague’s pay?
You should be cautious if you decide to go for transparency. Make sure you are clear and only address colleagues you know well. Some people overcome their inhibitions enough to offer one-way disclosures to colleagues and friends who do not want to talk about their own pay — this is, after all, a delicate topic and reciprocity is not a given.
You should be prepared for large discrepancies, especially if you work in an environment where pay decisions are not transparent and there is no banded salary level. Some companies prohibit employees from sharing salary information. In some cases, this can be overruled.
If you feel you may have an equal pay complaint, you will need to know the salary of a “comparator” — someone of the opposite sex doing equal work. This might not be easy to determine.
The Fawcett Society, a UK charity campaigning for women’s equality, wants the legal right to know what a male peer is paid. Fawcett has the right idea: structural changes are needed to make pay disclosure mandatory. The disincentive of individuals taking the initiative is powerful (but that is the point).
A good introduction to what makes a successful equal pay claim — and a riveting read in itself — is the tribunal judgment in the presenter Samira Ahmed’s recent case against the BBC. Reading about the hoops she had to go through — and her employer’s extraordinary responses — makes one realise that challenging your pay in public is no light undertaking. A public tribunal judgement is usually reached after years of work, during which internal grievance procedures and mediation were exhausted.
We should be mindful of risks, but there are many upsides to sharing — you may even be pleasantly surprised at what you find out. Collective paranoia about pay can be demoralizing, divisive and intense in a workplace. It can be healing and even cathartic for people to see the light.
Let me know if it’s something you try.
The writer is the FT Work & Careers editor
Source: Financial Times