Sunday, October 19, 2008

Salary and Confidentiality

As long as there is some-one in your friend-circle earning more than you , you are bound to be unhappy. Firm don't want you to be unhappy and hence forbid you to discuss about compensation.

Humor apart , but back in India I found that this is common topic around water-cooler among friends. I was never aware of the sensitivity of the topic till last week.

But in Japan and in Financial industry environment , it is very sensitive topic. Two employees are fired recently in firm X for openly discussing about Bonus issues and others are reminded that this is confidential matter.

I was surprised and turn to Google to satisfy curiosity.
  • In one of the surveys 51% mentioned that there is no policy regarding pay-confidentiality.
  • Surprisingly in some of places ,it is illegal to forbid employees , and they can share information about wages.
  • I personally feel that this is little gray area , as packages of top management are published and considered a good governance practice. Further salaries are openly discussed with recruiters and with tax-consultants.
  • Simple web-search or even casual talk with other HR-executives shows that there is no clarity about this topic and no concrete answers available. I would like to hear some views on this. Any pointers to legal articles will be highly appreciated

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Salary Information is always recommended to be kept confidential. Many organisations ask their employees to keep salary as 'personal' information and hence very confidential.

As you rightly mentioned in your article there is no point in discussing in ones salary rather important to look from a total benefits package perspective.