Chick Chat with Cornelia ODwyer: Will You Be Ok With Salary Transparency At Your Company?

 

Hello Guys! It’s #TalkTuesday A.K.A #ChickChat. Would you be ok if your company encouraged salary transparency as company policy so wage discrepancy doesn’t become an issue in the work place. Finding how much your co-worker makes much later down the line can breed antagonism around employees or should we see this more as competitive intelligence? Will wage discrepancy help disrupt any toxic office culture or make it worse for Nigerians?

I have been at my job for about the same time as my co-worker. It is a start up company so there are only a few of us. The bulk of my work was focused on business development, recruitment and operations. In short, I did about 3 people’s jobs. I soon got a promotion for all my grafting. A new title was awarded and it was made official. I immediately received an increase in my N360K salary in my next pay check. It was great of my boss at the time to see how hard I worked and reward me financially just within 8 months. Little did I know I would become the envy of my co-worker.

Because it’s such a small company it was easy to over hear conversations and look over people’s shoulders. My lead project manager co-worker who was friendly initially started acting funny all-of-a-sudden and it slowly led to us not being bothered with each other. We got along on a day to day but I wasn’t sure changed or what the problem was after asking her if she was ok one too many times and she was “using her nose to greet me” and had an attitude.
I soon found out she had seen my pay slip when our HR Manager took too long to pick up the paper from the printer and it was a hard pill to swallow with a 30{54d2fcdcd494adb6982253be6fe8d5492e5f586157f419110131714f9092ec60} increase in my salary. She felt I was shady by not telling her since we were “work friends”.

She finally took it up with my boss and then told me she felt it was wrong that we were on the “same level” (I have 4 more years of experience), doing the same work and could not put her feelings aside about the new salary gap. I told her I’m sorry she feels that way but truth be told “we are not mates” and there is nothing wrong in her re-measuring her value but I’m not sure why I’m paying the penalty for her ‘feeling’ underpaid or marginalised. She was nicer than ever to our male colleague who also got a raise and she left the company within 4 weeks. In our new staff meeting HR announced the idea of a new company policy on wage transparency and took a vote on how comfortable we all were but I’m not sure if this is at all productive for Nigeria. Isn’t it unofficial etiquette to NOT discuss or ask someone how much they make?