Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

MSN’s Careerbuilder.com wrote an article called 13 Things Not to Share with Your Co-Workers. Most of them make sense.

Medical history? Gossip? Religion? Politics?  You are at work, so keep it to a minimum or, preferably, not at all.  The fact is that people spend 40+ hours a week in the office together, nearly as much as they do with their family at home.  Most of that time is spent interacting, whether by email, instant message, phone, or face-to-face with people in the office.  This tends to lead to conversations and loose-lips.  You have to be careful with it, obviously.

#1 on the list, however, is “Salary information”.  I’m going to keep my neck out on that limb and say that this is an antiquated way of seeing things.  There’s really no reason to hide what people make, to keep it hidden that person A makes $2 per hour more than person B.

It’d fix gender and racial inequality faster than any legal or morale requirements — those haven’t had the impact that many people would like.  Whether you agree that there is or isn’t a disparity (I’ve seen arguments both ways), the fact of the matter is that if there isn’t this would bring that situation to light and if there is, then the solution would become clearer.

It’d ensure that there is a fairer distribution of money for work — people who work more, better, harder, effectively would generally be able to justify a better salary than those that simply “do the minimum”.

Human resources and managers tend to the be the people who are afraid of this salary discussion.  HR because they fear the possibility of lawsuits or more easily proven discrimination. Managers because .. well many of them are overpaid for the efforts that they take to help the company and because they can keep their budgets down by shaving half a dollar here, twenty cents there.