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Raconteur, Monday 6 June 2022: Should organisations allow staff to decide their own salary?

Should organisations allow staff to decide their own salary?

City CV CEO & Founder, Victoria McLean, featured in the Raconteur article: Should organisations allow staff to decide their own salary?, on June 6 2022.

Below is a short excerpt.

Self-setting salaries could be a valuable strategy to attract talent. But is it a good idea or an administrative nightmare?

How much do you think you are worth? Most employees prefer not to answer that question. Or if they do, they inflate the figure in anticipation of it being brought down by managers. Yet some companies have handed over salary setting to their staff, allowing them to decide how much they should be paid.

The impact of salary self-setting on gender pay gaps is another important consideration. Research shows that women find it awkward to negotiate their pay. The pro-salary self-setting camp argues that removing the stumbling block of the negotiation process when recruiting or promoting, and allowing individuals to decide their own worth, based on solid research, could help to close the gender pay gap. But others are less convinced.

Victoria McLean, founder and CEO of career consultancy City CV, says: “Many of the women I speak to, especially women of colour, are more reluctant than men to put a price on their worth. Self-setting salaries sounds great for the employee in principle, but I believe men are more likely to ask for more, and that could widen the gender pay gap. The onus would have to be on the employer to ensure this doesn’t happen and that the whole process is fair and transparent – but women should also be prepared to know and ask for their value.”

Done well, salary self-setting doesn’t result in sky-high salary budgets, nor does it damage the business. It can help to attract and retain talent in a tough labour market. But the key lies with an organisational culture of trust, transparency, and autonomy.

The article can be read in full here.

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