Hi HR practitioners,

Have you ever imagined how you would react if one early morning, you're at your office table with your cup of coffee, making your first round of email checking, and then you suddenly found this anonymous email, disclosing all the salary information of your firm, obviously including yourself. I believe most, if not all, people would scrutinize it through and compare others salary with yours, may it be the new E-commerce hot shots, or the old secretary, or your fellow colleagues in the same department, or even, all the VPs, CFOs, CIOs etc. If the bad is not worst yet, you realised your pay is nothing more than 1/2 of what a 23 yr old graduate is earning, and you've been with the firm for 5 faithful years in the marketing department. For those earning much more than others, you'll probably field your share of complains, jealousy and anger for those less fortunate. The truth is, when it comes to money, everybody goes crazy, and that's why companies all round the world keep salary information private.

The fact is, in every company you work, they are bound to have pretty big pay disparities, and it is quite inevitable, because people have to pay for skills and talent of the new comers. For instance, during good times when good and highly skilled people are hard to find, you'd pay whatever it takes to get those people. Logically, it's difficult to have a fair payroll system. If you are a good speaker and good at ass rubbing, you might get a pay rise right next month! In my opinion, there ain't much "fairness" when it comes to money. What do you think "fairness" is when it comes to pay? So it is rather difficult to convince the workers that you'll improve on the system. What happens if it happens again? The information is really all out there in the cyberspace for anyone smart enough to get it. Take Prudential Insurance in US for instance. For years it's been required to file with the New York superintendent of insurance the name, title and compensation of all employees making more than 60 grand. Even the law is designed to disclose the salaries of these people as an anticorruption measure to protect policyholders. Anybody smart enough could get all the data from the insurance department.

For people who are reading this, if you're an employee, and this happens to you, think about what you would feel and do, take into consideration your current job situation, the effort you've put in, the current job market etc. For the HR managers and top executives, what do you think you would do given such a situation in your organization, employees calling up to make appointments with you, little groups gather around all throughout the company talking nothing else but what people earn and dealing with very angry and ego- bruised people. If you have to arrange a meeting with your employees or dept representatives, what would you tell them to rectify this problem?

[information cited from: John Case, When Salaries Aren't Secret, Havard Business Review]