I think that wage transparency is very much a cultural thing. For instance, if you plug my job title and employer into Google, you will get a figure back which is more or less what I actually earn. I don't regard this as a problem at all, and it's pretty much regarded as the way things are in Australia (where things like negotiating a salary are reserved to very high level positions or American companies setting up a local branch office).
The legal safeguards seem to be in place in France (disclosure of highest salaries) to ensure that noone is paid above what the organisation can and should afford, so why the need for total transparency?
Let me turn that one around, and ask, what is the justification for not having total transparency? I would think that starting with 100% transparency and then selectively blocking out pieces of information only after due consideration is the way to go, especially if the primary source of funding is donations being made by the general public. If you start from the other position, and only share information if you are legally required to or if it paints you in a favourable light, well, that's not really meaningful transparency in my book.
Cheers,
Craig
On 5 February 2012 19:09, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com> wrote:
> Delphine Ménard, 05/02/2012 09:11:
>
>> This said, I believe that transparency can take many forms. In this
>> case, I would suggest that an option might be putting in place a solid
>> salary grid (grille salariale), which gives a range of what salary can
>> be expected for what position (the grid can be "broad" enough so that
>> people don't feel their salary has been disclosed). Cultural and local
>> practices need to be taken into consideration of course (as Stu pointed
>> out, align with the local job market to some extent).
>>
>> A grid may also have the important effect of telling people who are
>> joining the organisation what kind of progress they can expect within
>> it, which I find is both reassuring and motivating for employees. It
>> also helps the management to think about what structure to give the
>> organisation. Wikimedia Deutschland published not too long ago a plan
>> for hiring and staff which, if it is just a "plan" also brought up the
>> question of "how do we want to organize in the future?" and that was, I
>> think, extremely helpful, as it structured the way employees see their
>> job and future within the organisation.
>
>
> I think this is a good approach, but there's room for complete disclosure of
> wages in it too, just with a bit more work for interested people, which is
> good.
> For instance, in my university, which has to follow state law and has some
> autonomy, managers' wages are very public, but all the others are in 4×~10
> classes for staff plus 3×~20 classes for prof., the class one belongs to is
> very clear (not for profs, actually) and there are tables in the website
> which tell you exactly what each class costs/takes (this is a local
> decision). Nobody complains about it, actually there are problems only when
> people don't find the data because they're stupid and complain randomly
> about wages, but then it's easy to tell them that it's just their fault. The
> other problem are those few millions euros which aren't regulated by those
> classes; internal clarity is the first priority.
>
> Nemo
>
>
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