Do You Know How Much Your Peers Are Paid? Or Do You Want to Know?

“How much are you paid?” Peggy asked her friend Lilian who’d just been hired by the same department in the same bank where Peggy had worked for three years.

“Well,” replied Lilian after a long hesitation, a little surprised at her friend’s rather straightforward if not rude question but couldn’t find an excuse to deny her the answer — it was partly thanks to Peggy’s referral that she’d got the job after all, “$xx,xxx plus bonus at the end of the year. I’ve negotiated a little with HR and I guess it matches with yours, right?”

“Oh … yes, yes, of course. That’s great! Congratulations!” Peggy forced a big smile out of the corners of her lips although she looked like she’d swallowed a fly and her tone expressed the opposite to what congratulations normally meant — her real annual salary was $5000 lower than Lilian’s and she hated herself for not having negotiated at all during her own interview.

Is that scenario familiar to you? Have you been a Peggy yourself? If not, are you at least able to understand how a person in Peggy’s situation feels?

This story brings out the controversy about pay transparency. If you are in favor of the policy, you will be pleased to learn the recent trend — businesses are under increasing pressure to adopt it in their talent…