Why employees need to know how much their colleagues are getting

A transparent payroll management system implies two parts: the disclosure of information about the level of income of employees and their ability to change it. This approach allows subordinates to move into the category of partners - those who can make decisions and influence the future of the company.

How the system of open salaries works

In companies with open salaries, employees have access to data on how much each of them receives - even the head of the business. This information may be stored in a public Google Doc or on an internal platform.

Employees can use this information to evaluate the performance of teams and individuals. Also, it is useful for building career plan: a person can start from the salary of a colleague, and then evaluate what results he needs to achieve in order to reach the desired level of income.

If someone wants to raise his salary, he can write about it publicly, for example, on a special board in Trello. The decision that an employee deserves a raise is made jointly by the team - everyone gives feedback on the work of a colleague.

The pay raise form should have a template for the person to fill out. For example, it can include questions about what results he has already achieved, what he is especially proud of, what goals he sets for himself, how he plans to develop. In addition, the manager can ask the employee to give feedback on the work of the company and colleagues: to talk about which business processes are well-organized and which are bad.

After that, you need to provide time for colleagues to give feedback. Reviews are left in writing in the card. If something important was said orally, then this should also be added to it.

Feedback can be both positive and negative.

At the same time, the review does not have to concern professional success - it can also affect the emotional sphere: how comfortable it is to work with a person, how involved he is. A certain period of time is given for feedback, for example, a week.

If no one speaks out against, then the salary increases. If negative points were noted, colleagues may offer an increase of a smaller amount or even postpone it until the desired goals are achieved. When employees fail to agree, the decision is made team leader.

What open salaries do for business

Transparency of team income information is a business risk. But it is justified if you want to build relationships with the team on the principle of partnership and openness.

Increasing employee motivation

If employees can manage their pay by setting goals for themselves, their motivation grows. They understand that in order to achieve great results, you need to develop.

Frederic Laloux book Discovering the Organizations of the Future, for example, notes that thanks to such a system, employees spend less time pleasing the boss and discuss colleagues' salaries. If they don't care about fair rewards, they'll put more effort into work, business-friendly activities.

Overcoming the crisis

Opening salaries can help during periods when you have to cut costs and reduce the team. All thanks to transparency: the manager can involve employees in solving the problem by honestly talking about the situation.

The team will have the opportunity to evaluate how useful each person is to the business and whether their salary matches the contribution.

And then, based on all the opinions, the manager can decide which of the employees is the least useful, and reduce his salary or even completely. say goodbye with him.

You can use the 360-degree method to evaluate staff. It involves the creation of a questionnaire about the qualities of an employee. His colleagues, subordinates and leaders answer questions. The survey flexibly adapts to the tasks of the business and allows you to evaluate both hard skills and soft skills.

Building a self-managed team

Self-determination of salaries is the first step to create a self-managed company, since one of the functions of the employer is transferred employees. Gradually, the number of decisions that team members make may increase.

In a self-managed company, employees are directly involved in shaping the development strategy, are responsible for the future of the organization, and become its partners. For example, each employee can impose a ban on any decision of company members - including management.

How to make salaries open

This should not happen abruptly, because money is a sensitive topic for many. Companies need to prepare for the disclosure of information in order to increase the effectiveness of the team, and not demotivate employees.

Define a business challenge

Before opening salaries, you need to understand why you need it. For example, management may seek to instill in employees a sense of responsibility for income business, strengthen the team or improve work efficiency.

Based on the goal, a decision is made on how to organize the process.

For example, in order for employees to feel responsible for the future of the company, it is worth additionally giving them access to the profit and loss statement.

To raise the level of the team - to motivate additional training. Employees must prove their professional development in order to increase their salary. To do this, the company can make the passage of courses one of the factors allowing ask for a raise.

And in order to increase the efficiency of employees, you need to create a system in which each member of the team will publicly report on its results and receive feedback not only from managers, but also from colleagues.

Analyze current salaries

Perhaps during the analysis you will find that equal professionals receive different pay. It is important to understand what is the reason: employees in similar positions show different efficiency or they initially came to the company with different requirements.

Before opening salaries, it is better to equalize wages for equal specialists.

And if their qualifications differ, then it is worth developing a methodology for assessing professional qualities and responsibilities: education, experience, skills, level of responsibility. For example, junior sales managers will receive from 80 to 110 thousand rubles, middle - from 110 to 150 thousand rubles, and senior - from 150 to 220 thousand rubles.

Based on all this, you need to create a clear system.

Consider a salary increase system

You should be prepared for the fact that after the disclosure of information, employees will come with questions about why their salary differs from the salary of their colleagues. So that other people's income does not demotivate team members, it is necessary to develop a system and criteria for increasing salaries:

• Introduce a limit on the amount of the increase or the period after which the employee can claim a salary increase. For example, do not raise more than 30 thousand rubles in six months.
• Develop a system by which everyone will evaluate their professional development: achieving personal and team goals, obtaining additional education, and so on. For example, for a salary increase, you must complete the plan by at least 70%.

At the same time, it is necessary to take into account whether the payroll fund is ready for subsequent increases in wages. If not, then their opening may have to be postponed.

Prepare legally

Salary information is personal data that regulated Federal Law "On Personal Data". Therefore, before moving to the new system, employees must sign an agreement to disclose information about their income to other employees.

What difficulties may arise and how to deal with them

Variety. Their number will depend on how well team members are able to negotiate: ask for a raise, voice their expectations and adequately assess their condition so as not to burn out. The company should educate employees on this.

Difficulties with self-raising salaries

To increase the salary, employees need to provide evidence of their achievements and success. For individual team members, this can be a problem.

Employees may underestimate themselves or find it difficult to speak about your achievementsand even more so to do it publicly, getting feedback from colleagues.

If one employee, out of embarrassment, does not raise his salary, while others have already decided to do so, his motivation may fall.

Here’s what to do to make employees feel comfortable asking for a raise:

• Estimate market wages. To do this, you can recommend that staff study vacancies or go to interviews to other companies. This will help them feel more confident about promotions, and the business will receive information about salaries in order to maintain them at the market level. Of course, there is a risk that an employee decides to accept an offer from another company. And in this case, the employer may offer him to change the team, the set of tasks or increase the salary.
• Hold one-on-one meetings. You need to make regular conversations with the manager or mentor, who will give the employee feedback, evaluate the work and help formulate goals.
• Make the salary increase process flexible. If it is difficult for an employee to raise the topic of a raise on his own, then he can ask an HR manager or manager to evaluate the results for him.
• Create a feedback template. Before introducing a transparent system, we need to create a template for how to write reviews in an environmentally friendly way. work of colleagues, otherwise, at the initial stage, many will receive negative comments and may lose motivation. For example, it is important not to forget to celebrate successes and only then move on to those points that you would like to improve. At the same time, all feedback should be supported by examples from the experience of joint work.

Increasing pressure on employees

Employees set public goals for themselves, which allows any member of the team to track results. This puts serious pressure, and not everyone can withstand it: some begin to work, while others may quit. Support from the company is important here, as well as training employees on how to plan ambitious but achievable tasks for themselves.

For example, you can enter the system goal setting according to OKR (Objectives and Key Results). According to her, you need to set a big goal, and to achieve it, outline several intermediate results. This allows employees to be motivated.