Is my Salary Confidential Information?

Hi Everyone,

Happy Monday!! I hope you all had a restful weekend!

I read a really interesting article over the weekend about salary confidentiality. Perhaps some of you may have seen it too, but I wanted to mention it now and perhaps have a conversation about keeping your earnings a secret form your colleagues.

Contractually you are not permitted to discuss your monthly earnings with ANYONE except the person responsible for clicking “pay” on the pay run. I used the word contractually because essentially every day that you go to work you are bound by your employment contract and are required to comply to every point in this document.

The article that I read over the weekend explained that in today’s time with the internet, salary surveys and “liberal” employees, keeping your salary confidential is becoming more and more difficult as the times change.

Essentially, salaries are sensitive subject matter and should be treated as such. Nine out of ten times, salary information is compromised by an unknowing party who honestly doesn’t know any better. While this is the case, as an employee you are required to make yourself aware of what is required of you contractually, as well as to adhere to confidentiality stipulations and basic employment etiquette. Gone are the days that employees can plead ignorance and even if an honest mistake is made, if you want to enter the “employment world” you need to conduct yourself as an upstanding employee at all times.

Don’t ever discuss your salary or earnings with your colleagues, not ever. Not only are you shooting yourself in your foot but the person whom you discuss this with is unnecessarily put in a compromising situation as well. By talking to them about your salary, you force them to default on their contractual agreements and its simply bad cricket.

Discussing contracts and salary packages and even bonus packages is irresponsible and poor form for everyone involved.

So what’s the big deal about all the secrecy around salaries? Why is it a secret in the first place? Surely if someone is more qualified than I am, they automatically qualify for a larger salary and surely my employers know how to distribute these earnings fairly, right? Err…sorry to say but err…your wrong.

In a perfect world, yes, yes and yes…All’s fair in love and war and if I do more work, I should get a bigger salary than someone doing less work.

But you and I both know that this world is far from being perfect and in fact so are its inhabitants and while it’s a great idea to play nicely, I still haven’t met a soul that actually does.

Salaries, wages, bonuses and in fact anything and everything relating to funds and earnings is quite simply not your business to know or to be discussing. In fact this is such a sensitive topic that even if it was your business to know, you still wouldn’t be discussing this confidential information. Only HR and Financial Managers are savvy to employee wages and salaries and even so this is on a need to know basis.

Salaries and wages are sensitive employment details and you need to consider the bigger picture before venting out your salary frustrations on your colleagues.

Office politics are the beginning of the end of a perfectly amicable working environment and trust me when I say, the moment a salary is mentioned problems follow suit.

If you have a gripe about your salary, address this matter with the parties who have the power to improve your financial situation, as opposed to forcibly involve those who may in fact be in a worse financial situation than yourself (and possibly earning less than you do).

Your salary and any discussion thereof are contractually reserved for your and your immediate employer’s ears only.

I really don’t mean to sound harsh at the moment, I guess this boils down to a very basic human function; Responsibility.

Take responsibility for your career and your employment. Take responsibility for your employment contract and be sure to read it and know what is required of you. If your contact is vague, seek clarity and by all means address your salary questions, comments and problems with your employer.

Anyway, that’s it from me.

Let me know your thoughts or even questions about sharing your salary with people you shouldn’t or maybe you can comment on a situation you may have experienced around revealing confidential company information that you have been in before.

Either way, pop in and say Hi, I’d really like to hear from you.

Take care,

I’m out…

Jo Blog

joblog@jobs.co.za

Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 3:27 pm and is filed under The Employment Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.