公开分享薪酬并不是实现薪酬透明的正确方法
不久前，一名前谷歌员工为了提高办公室里的薪酬透明度，制作了一个电子表格让同事们分享自己的薪酬信息。在过去两周里，我看到有许多媒体报道与此事有关，而且很多评论都说其他人也应该这么做，效果非常好。
我理解这种评论的动机。大家都想确保自己在薪酬上得到了公平对待。从表面上看，与同事公开讨论薪酬来对抗薪酬不平等听起来是个可行的解决方案。但这其实是个糟糕的想法，理由如下：
薪酬待遇从来都不简单
某个职位的薪酬通常会在一个区间内，而不会是固定值。从事同一工作的员工的薪酬会在一个区间内，不一定都会获得相同的薪酬。
这不是员工薪酬机制的运作方式。影响一个人薪酬的因素有很多，比如多年经验、特殊技能组合、证书、管理经验、绩效等。
除非你还打算要求所有人在分享他们薪酬的同时分享简历和绩效评估，否则你不可能知道让你和同事的薪酬不相等的所有因素。
你的雇主也会和“劳动力市场”中争夺同一种人才的其他雇主比较薪酬。雇主们通过地理范围、行业、组织规模以及其他因素来定义劳动力市场，这些因素都会影响员工的薪酬。一个组织也会在多个劳动力市场中争夺人才。
比如，在西雅图，从小初创公司到谷歌、微软、亚马逊和 Facebook 等科技巨头都在争夺科技人才。如果雇主想要雇佣软件开发者和其他相关工人，就必须提供比人力资源、销售、营销等部门更好的薪酬待遇。
因此，工程经理的薪酬不大可能和人力资源经理的薪酬一样。你也许不喜欢这种情况，但这实际上很公平。市场对人力资源经理的争夺并不激烈。
我们都是凡人
你是否觉得公开和同事分享薪酬会让事情变得难堪呢？绝对会这样。一些人赚的比其他人多，而如果公司内没有对薪酬差异的公开讨论，你就会自己想为什么会出现这种差别。
人们肯定会产生愤恨情绪。很可能工作中的确存在一些歧视，也可能是其他人的条件更好，因此可以要求更高的薪酬。
因此，尽管我认为薪酬透明至关重要，但在电子表格中分享薪酬并不能解决薪酬平等的问题。误解这一数据的空间太大。
而且，肯定有一些人对公开和同事谈论薪酬感到不适。这些人怎么办呢？如果他们不愿意和同事分享自己现在的薪酬，是否他们就不应该在薪酬上获得平等对待呢？
我们和他们的对立并非解决之道
真正的薪酬透明应该是雇主和员工间的公开对话。根据随意分享的误导数据而向人力资源部门要求薪酬平等，这不大现实。
谷歌（和其他雇主）需要从这次事件中吸取的教训是，当和雇员就薪酬策略以及实践沟通不畅时，当公司无法确保薪酬机制依然公平时，员工们就有了猜测的余地。
而员工的猜测不大可能对公司有利。缺少信息自然会导致信任崩溃。
最近我们做了一项员工调查，询问他们是否认为自己目前获得的薪酬低于自己应得的。结果显示，有 55% 认为自己的薪酬低于市场价的人，实际上的薪酬就是市场价或高于市场价。人们通常不会因为自己的薪酬低于市场价而离职，但会因为认为自己的薪酬低于市场价而离职。
如果公司对于薪酬策略太过于守口如瓶，他们就有可能因为误解而失去自己最优秀的员工。
而如果确实存在不公平的地方，坦诚公司将如何消除不平等对于维持员工的信任就很有用。比如，Salesforce 首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫 (Marc Benioff) 最近宣布 ，将积极审视公司内任何可能导致男女共同不同酬的问题，他将仔细检查全公司 1.6 万名员工的薪酬情况。
他也承认，要解决这一问题可能要花几年时间，但这是他公开承诺的第一步。其他公司也可以仿效，更公开地讨论薪酬实践。
这并不意味着要公开所有人的薪酬，而是要主动地和员工讨论薪酬。对薪酬进行保密的坏处要比好处多。
Sharing Salaries In A Spreadsheet Is Not The Way To Pay Transparency
I’ve seen a lot of media coverage in the last couple weeks regarding one former Google employee’s effort to bring more paytransparency to her workplace by creating aspreadsheet for co-workers to share their salary information with one another. Since that story broke, the commentary has been along the lines of, “Yes! You should do this, too. Just tell everyone what you make. It will work out great.”
I understand the motivation. Everyone wants to ensure they’re being paid fairly. On its face, battling against potential pay inequity by openly discussing pay with co-workers sounds like a valid solution. But here’s why it’s actually a terrible idea.
Compensation Is Not That Simple
Salaries typically fall within a range, rather than being a set number for a specific position. Different employees working the same job will hopefully be somewhere within that range, but won’t necessarily have identical salaries.
That’s not how employee compensation works. There are many factors that may have an impact on someone’s compensation — years of experience, special skill sets, certifications, management experience, performance, etc.
Unless you’re planning to ask everyone to share their resumes and performance evaluations along with their salary, you can’t possibly know all the factors that may have impacted a co-worker’s compensation compared to your own.
If companies are too close-mouthed about how they set compensation … they risk losing their best employees over a misunderstanding.
Your employer is also hopefully comparing pay data at your organization with similar employers competing for the same talent in your city — what’s called a “labor market.” Employers define labor markets using geography, industry, the size of the organization and a number of other facets that can have an impact on compensation for employees. A single organization may be competing for talent in more than one labor market.
For example, in Seattle, the tech talent pool is highly sought after by companies ranging from small startups to the tech giants Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. If you employ software developers and other related workers, you may have to be more competitive with pay packages for that set of employees than you would be for other departments — human resources, sales, marketing, etc.
So, a manager in engineering likely won’t make the same salary as a manager in human resources. You don’t have to like it, but that actually is fair. The market for human resource managers simply isn’t as competitive.
We’re Only Human
Do you think things might get awkward if you share your salary openly with your co-workers? It absolutely will. Somebody is going to be making more than somebody else, and if there isn’t an open dialogue happening with your company about why people are paid theway they are, you’re left to figure out why the differences might exist.
Resentment is almost guaranteed. It’s certainly possible that there’s some discrimination at work. It’s also possible that someone has better qualifications than you, and therefore demands a higher salary.
So while I believe transparency around pay is essential, sharing salaries in a spreadsheetisn’t going to solve issues around pay equity. There’s too much room for misunderstanding the data and what it actually is revealing.
Also, some people will just never feel comfortable talking openly about their own pay with peers. What about them? Do they not deserve fair pay if they’re not willing to share with co-workers what they’re currently making?
Us Versus Them Is Not The Path Forward
True pay transparency should be an open dialogue between employers and employees. Storming your HR department to demand fair pay based on what could be misleading data shared haphazardly is unlikely to result in what you really want — fair pay based on the current labor market for your position and qualifications.
What Google (and other employers) need to take away from this is that when you’re notcommunicating well with your employees about your compensation strategy and practices, and how you as a company are ensuring that pay remains equitable, you leave room for speculation.
People are not always leaving companies because they’re underpaid, but because they believe they are.
And the speculation is unlikely to be favorable. A lack of information naturally leads to a breakdown in trust.
We recently asked our employee survey respondents whether they believed they were underpaid. It turns out 55 percent of those who felt underpaid were actually paid at or above market value. People are not always leaving companies because they’re underpaid, but because they believe they are.
If companies are too close-mouthed about how they set compensation — what data they use, how they determine their labor markets, why employees fall where they do within a range — they risk losing their best employees over a misunderstanding.
And, if pay inequities do exist, being open about how the organization is attempting to remedy those inequities can go a long way in maintaining trust with employees. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example, recently announced that he’s actively examining any issues that may exist around a gender pay gap at the company by closely examining the salaries of its 16,000 employees.
He has admitted that it may take a couple of years to rectify all the issues, but it’s a first step — and one that he’s making publicly rather than behind closed doors. Other companies would be wise to follow suit and discuss compensation practices more openly.
That doesn’t mean posting everyone’s salary up on the wall, but it does mean being proactive about discussing compensation with your employees. Keeping it secret does far more harm than good.
来源：TC
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