How NOT to Give Everyone a Fair Salary

Company Testing Standardized Salaries Is Struggling

I think what they did there was just plain wrong. The way to equalize salary considerations is not to give everyone, from the newest hires to the CEO, the same salary. That is a sure fire way of causing discontent.

What they need is to give the newest, lowest ranking hires a fair base salary and then, from there, calculate everyone’s salary based on veterancy, responsibility and, most importantly, merit.

And I think it’s ok for people to know their co-workers salary. There’s no reason I can think of to hide salaries that is for the employee’s benefit. If there’s a difference between my salary and someone else’s, I want to know that, if I have a higher one, there’s a good reason for it. And if there isn’t, maybe I shouldn’t get one. And, if it’s lower, I want to know what that other person did to ingratiate themselves upon the management so I can do it too and get paid better for it.

For example, if someone is getting paid more than me because they have a year of company time on me, I think that’s fair. If they get paid more because they are very reliable and help whenever asked, I want to do that too. If they get paid more because they handle 3 times more responsibilities then me… well, there’s not a lot I can do about it but that’s fair.


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