Pay talks still taboo for employees: Report
58% of workers would consider leaving a job if they found a company that was more transparent about salary.
An unwelcome offshoot of the work-from-home era is that workers are less comfortable talking about compensation with their managers, according to a report by beqom, which could have serious implications for pay equity.
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“In a year like 2020, employees may have in fact been justified feeling uneasy discussing their pay, but the gender and age gaps in these responses should be of concern to employers,” Tanya Jansen, beqom co-founder and CMO, said in a statement. “This reluctance has the potential to exacerbate gender-related pay gaps and to affect not only the retention of but the lifetime earning potential of Gen Z in particular.”
Jansen noted that just the idea of inequity in compensation is enough to impact employees. “Because pay equity perceptions have such a strong influence on retention and employee morale, it’s incumbent upon organizations to be more transparent and communicative with employees around compensation,” she said.
In fact, the survey found 58% of workers would consider leaving a job if they found a company that was more transparent about salary.
Beqom surveyed 1,000 employees in November 2020 to learn more about their feelings regarding pay and benefits. The study found that 41% of workers were uncomfortable talking with their managers about pay. Of those, 37% were happy just to have a job and worried that asking about pay will make them look bad. A quarter worried asking about pay could actually affect their employment status.
Even discussing pay with their colleagues isn’t safe. Forty percent of workers said they were willing to talk about salary with peers, compared to 46% in 2018.
Older men are most likely to feel comfortable broaching the subject, the study found. Sixty-two percent of men and 51% of boomers said they felt comfortable talking to their manager about pay, compared to 44% of women and 26% of Gen Z workers.
Related: COVID-related stress causing women to leave workplace
The study found employers aren’t sending a good message about pay security. More than half of workers had to take a pay cut during the pandemic, but only 24% of executives did so. No surprise then that only 44% of workers said they would take a pay cut to avoid other workers being furloughed.
Some other findings from the report:
- Employees are more interested in knowing what different positions get paid (37%) than other people on their team (21%) or executives (17%).
- Flexibility is clearly important to employees, as 77% said they would consider leaving for another company that offered unlimited PTO and 76% want flexible working hours.
- Parents have been hit hard by the pandemic. Forty-seven percent have had to take fewer hours or lower pay, and 48% are worried that it has affected their ability to move up at work.
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