Should You Opt for Pay Transparency?

Shawnee Love   •  
October 16, 2014

The Compensation Full Monty is currently fashionable and the media is giving plenty of airtime to organizations proudly sharing their methods for full disclosure on pay.  Articles encouraging every company to publish their salary ranges and post actual personal rates of pay seem to abound.  However, I think it is important to point out that these champions of full disclosure in general:

  • Have not been in business very long (i.e., a lifespan measurable in years not decades),
  • Have practiced pay transparency most if not all of their company’s lifespan,
  • Mostly hire millennials (born between the early 1980’s and early 2000’s) who like pay transparency and dare I mention haven’t been in the workforce long enough to warrant significant pay differentials based on performance and experience like you might see for Boomers and Gen Xers, and
  • Are US based so they don’t have to deal with the same level of privacy rules as we have in Canada.

Pay transparency can be a great way to build trust and accountability, but once started it is difficult to undo if you discover it doesn’t suit your workplace. I encourage you to practice transparency only if it makes sense for your business.