Unspoken Rules of Office (3) - Salary Confidentiality / 辦公室潛規則 (三）- 薪金機密性

Nowadays, in Private sectors, individual's salary supposed to be a well-kept secret. You seldom share how much money you are making with your colleagues or even friends, well, you may share this with your best best friend, I won't comment on that.

You want to keep your salary to your own because people make different amount of money even though they are at similar or same positions in the same company. There are many reasons behind :

1. experiences,
2. qualifications,
3. timing,
4. relationships (internal & external),
5. even genders.

First 2 reasons are self-explanatory. The 3 one, timing, means the time you get into the company or get that particular position. If it so happens to be at a good time of the company, or the job market is very competitive, chances are you can get a better packages than the other way round.

Internal and external relationships may strongly affect your value to the company, hence, is always related to your salary in certain extend.

Genders' effects on salary level is always a debate topic. Well, I agree that different genders should be treated equally, however, we all know the world is not ideal and inequality happens everyday. There is a good post regarding this topic by our fellow Steemian @livinguktaiwan.

The list is in no way completed, so you should know the complexity behind this topic. Think about if your colleagues who are doing the same work as you, with similar amount of experiences and qualifications to you, realize that you're making more money than him. What would he think? Even the most easy going person may have hard feeling about this. In the other way, what will you feel if you find out your colleague who sits next to you has a salary level higher than you? It can be a huge damage to employees' moral if salary information is not carefully handled.

You may argue that "Salary Confidentiality" is just a tool the HR department is using to manipulate salary levels in the company, which in certain extend is true. However, I do believe keeping salary to your own self can be more beneficial than harm to yourself. It helps keeping the office in harmony. That's why I won't tell anybody else how much I am making, not even to my parents. Well, my wife knows it but do I have a choice?

Different cultural background will have different point of views on different things, so salary may not necessarily a confidential information in your country. If this is the case, please do share with us the situations in your countries, that must be very interesting!

寫這篇文章其實是因為看過了@livinguktaiwan 的文章之後，又想起我在北京的同事的不滿事件。原因就是因為在北京辦公室中工資情報似乎比較透明，導致同事們找我投訴他們我工資比起另一組的同事較低，覺得很委屈已要我處理。我亦因這事頭痛了好一陣子，用盡方法才能擺平。

期間同事們的士氣大跌，對工作的表現當然有所打擊。我還要擔心這幾位同事會不會另謀高就。

這件事令我深深的體會到每個人的工資水平都應該絕對保密。因為就如上面所說的，要做到真正同工同酬真是談何容易。有很多不同的因素在左右員工的工資水平，經驗，時機，人際關係，甚至孚是性別。要解釋清楚是十分困難的事，為了辦公室的和諧，同事們的士氣，工資多少還是保密為佳。

當然不同的文化背景同樣是一個變數。我在北京遇到我問題就不曾在其他地區的辦公室出現。國內對這方面的處理方式有什麼不同嗎？ 其他地區又如何呢？ 歡迎大家多多分享。

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Unspoken Rules of Office (2) / 辦公室潛規則 (二)

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