Should I disclose my salary?

Singapore

SHOULD salary comparisons be a part of workplace banter? And can pay transparency help close pay gaps?

A recent LinkedIn post by Gravity Payments chief executive Dan Price reignited these age-old debates, by arguing that "the single best way to get a raise is to have data showing your colleagues who do the same job make more".

While most human resources professionals The Business Times spoke to agreed that disclosure can be advantageous - from both the individual's and the organisation's perspectives - they cautioned that this is no panacea to inequity. Some also pointed to challenges organisations may face if there were to be full disclosure.

In his post on Nov 12, Price also wrote: "Keeping pay info secret is a long-time scam perpetrated by companies to help them and hurt you. Please don't fall for it.

"I know it can be uncomfortable to talk about money, especially if you were raised in a culture where it was considered taboo. But keep in mind who is benefiting - and who is being hurt - by that culture."

Some years ago, the Seattle-based entrepreneur also stirred a media firestorm, with brickbats and bouquets in equal measure, by setting a US$70,000 minimum wage for each employee in his financial services company.

John Bittleston, chairman of Terrific Mentors and a regular contributor to BT, said he had insisted on publishing all salaries of employees when he incorporated international food company Cerebos Pacific back in 1979.

What led to this was a personal encounter at a well-known restaurant here revealing that local managers were discriminated against - they were paid about half of what their expatriate counterparts got.

"At Cerebos Pacific, my salary and T&C (terms and conditions), as well as those of my housekeepers and drivers, were all published," Bittleson said.

"If I were starting a business again, and I do have a tiny one, I insist that everyone knows what everyone is paid. And when someone asks why so-and-so is paid more than them, I ask them to tell me," he added.

US tech firm Buffer, which provides tools for social media management, has taken a similar approach of publishing all its employees' salaries on a spreadsheet that is publicly available online in the name of ensuring fairness and gender parity.

And while the company's overall female bench strength has grown, fewer women in senior roles still translate to an overall gender pay gap, The Guardian reported in February 2020.

Disclosing wages, therefore, may just be a small first step towards addressing inequity.

Madu Ionascu, founder and chief executive of Salary Board, said pay disclosure can be strategic for an individual seeking a raise or promotion, but it will not suffice.

"There are very few jobs that are exactly the same. So if you were to challenge your colleague's pay and ask for a salary match, be prepared to articulate well how your job contributes to the achievement of the company's objectives and strategy, why it is as important as your colleague's, and how you possess and apply the same unique skill sets," he said.

That said, overall market transparency and more public debates around compensation can contribute to increased social mobility and meritocracy, Ionascu said. Salary Board was set up to tackle these issues, he said, by providing real-time data that benchmark job roles based on specific responsibilities, skills needed and compensation.

Jaya Dass, managing director for Malaysia and Singapore at Randstad, noted that wage transparency may be attractive for younger employees just entering an organisation. But from an organisational standpoint, it may not always be straightforward to put this into practice.

"It is not possible to do an apples-to-apples comparison because there are so many factors that come into play in deciding each unique employees' compensation. These may include their certifications, education background, past work experiences, and other traits that may make them a better fit or less of a fit for that role," Dass said.

Employees should be able to discuss with superiors on remuneration by judging their own worth. Their work should speak for itself, she said.

"Dan's post probably points to the larger question of how to better improve equality in the workplace. But I think that in evolved societies like Singapore, for the most part, there would be many governance practices in place so that things like remuneration are decided on fairly. Organisations are governed in totality and compensation isn't just as cursorily decided as he implies.

"Those aren't numbers just plucked from the air," she added.

There are also legislative and cultural differences between Asian societies like Singapore and countries in the "West".

For example, pay equity laws in some US states entitle candidates and employees to information about the pay for positions they are applying for or being promoted into. In Singapore, by contrast, employment contracts often include confidentiality clauses that prevent pay discussions.

Andrew Chan, founder and chief executive of ACI HR Solutions, also pointed to the common practice in Asian companies, of asking for prospective employees' last-drawn salaries.

Many employees are now pushing back against this, Chan said.

This debate is especially rife at a time where many who have been retrenched in the past 2 years had taken on ad-hoc gigs or jobs of a much lower salary, he noted.

"The more important question should be, well, what is the role worth? We want to be compensated according to the job scope, not necessarily what our last-drawn pay is," he said.