Article
The Moscow News, 23 Ôåâðàëÿ 2010
Keeping score of Moscow salaries
According to a recent survey conducted by the SuperJob recruitment portal, more than one half of Russian employees know the salaries of their colleagues. However, recruiters say that in most cases, knowing how much fellow employees make has a negative impact on people’s motivation and performance.
Fifty four percent of those polled said that they knew the salaries of their colleagues, while 30 per cent said they knew the salaries of all employees of their company. Only 16 per cent of the pollsters said they had no idea about how much their colleagues are earning. Meanwhile, the majority of the survey participants, 79 per cent, said that information on salaries in their company is supposed to be «confidential.»
Ulyana Trifonova, territorial director for mass projects at the Kelly Services recruiter, told The Moscow News that employers’ requirements regarding confidentiality of salary information may vary depending on the position and the applicants’ education.
«Warnings of this kind shouldn’t be necessary for mid-level and top managers,» she said. «But when it comes to massive hiring of production and warehouse personnel, as well as applicants for lower-level positions, employers often warn applicants about confidentiality. This often has to do with a difference in salaries between employees who have roughly the same responsibilities.»
«In 90 per cent of all cases, employers remind their employees that the size of their salaries shouldn’t be discussed with colleagues», Yana Leykina, HR director of the ANCOR recruiter, told The Moscow News.
However, information that is supposed to remain confidential often becomes public.
According to the survey’s results, advertising managers, PR managers and economists turned out to be best informed about their fellow worker’s salaries, even ahead of finance personnel, account managers; surprisingly, fewer HR managers and secretaries knew of their colleagues’ salaries, although due to the nature of their work, HR managers and secretaries often have access to such information.
Meanwhile, recruiters say that being aware of how much other people in the office make doesn’t do much good for an employee’s motivation.
«If an employee knows that his/her colleagues are paid more, he/she feels „fair“ indignation», Leykina said, adding that there are two types of reaction to a situation of that kind: «active», when the employee tries to get explanations from the superiors or openly discusses the situation with colleagues, and «passive» when the employee withdraws into himself and becomes indifferent towards work.«
«If the situation is the reverse and an employee knows that he/she is paid better than others, that gives him/her pride, but not motivation,» Leykina said.
«In most cases, an employee is unlikely to be sincerely happy if he/she learns that a colleague from another department has a higher salary», said Trifonova. «And it is unlikely that the employee is going to work better and more productively after that.»
«However, I know of a situation when at a small private company, a list of all employees’ salaries was put up on the wall,» Trifonova added. «But the employees were focused on active sales, and their income directly depended upon sales figures. So knowing that someone else was able to make more was a good incentive for the others.»