Should You Talk Salary With Your Peers?
Recently on Good Morning America, the CEO of a career website was discussing the use of salary data to help careers through salary negotiation.
Essentially the positioning of the segment was that sharing salary information among colleagues was seen as "office gossip", thus discouraging the practice. Knowing what your peers earn is a fundamental way to ensure "equal pay for equal work". If that's now seen as un-American then so is feminism.
Diane Sawyer is one of the best in the business, but that piece took the perspective that an employer wants to portray. Employers want you to think:
- Salary websites are merely gossip sites that have invalid information
- Using information from the internet doesn't take performance into account so it can't be used for negotiation purposes
- Having conversations regarding salary among peers is akin to corporate espionage--or worse, the equivalent of The Enquirer.
At Springraise, it's our belief that this attitude stunts career progression and compensation. Having an open dialog about compensation among peers is a good thing and can lead to higher motivation and healthy competition among peers. Sure, bitterness could result if one person resents being paid less than another, but that's not the peer's fault. It's the fault of the hiring manager and the company guidelines.
Each of us has to measure success in ways we feel comfortable. Blatantly discouraging discussions about how compensation and performance are correlated, however, is nothing more than self-serving to the employer. It is our policy at Springraise for all employees to know exactly how others are compensated. We live what we profess.