Flip Chart Fairy Tales

I had a bit of an over-indulgent long weekend, so I was feeling a bit jaded this morning. This story cheered me up though.

The Italian government has posted the earnings of every worker in Italy on the Internet. Far from being a mistake, like our government’s data leaks, this was deliberate. The outgoing centre-left coalition claimed that the move was part of a programme to improve transparency. More likely, it was to create a mess for Silvio Berlusconi to clear up once he takes office later this week.

The website was jammed by Italians trying to find out what their work colleagues earned.

The more mischievous among you will already be imagining what might happen if our government did something similar. Some people might look at the pay of the rich and famous but most would try to find out what their colleagues and friends were earning. The result, as Guru says, would be a headache for employers as they tried to justify unfair and arbitrary pay differentials.

And pay levels are always unfair. Sure, we have job evaluation schemes and other criteria that are designed to look objective but, in the end, pay levels are always influenced by the subjective judgements of those in power. Or, to put it more bluntly, by favouritism. Which is why most senior executives would be horrified at the idea of pay transparency. Most of them know that they would not be able to justify the disparities in pay to disgruntled employees.

I am sceptical of the results of this survey which claims that 60% of HR managers would be prepared to disclose their salaries in the interests of pay parity. They probably said that only because they know it will never happen. Of all people, HR managers would have the most to lose from a pay transparency policy. They would be the ones left to deal with the aggro.

The Italian pay data has now been removed from the Internet. This is a pity. It would have been interesting and entertaining to see the impact on employee relations in Italian companies. Would it have had the positive impact on motivation that the advocates of such a policy claim, or would there just have been weeks of chaos and paralysis as managers tried to sort out the mess? Alas, we’ll never know now.