When Salaries Aren’t Secret

When Salaries Aren’t Secret

Hank Adamson is the chief executive officer of RightNow!, a clothing chain that has has seen significant rapid growth in the last couple of years. (Case, 2001). It has over 28 stores across the country. Part of that increase in growth was in part because of his investment in “younger tech-savvy 20-somethings” (Case, J., 2001, pg. 1). The new employees developed a lot of buzz and excitement about the new online media presence through a redeveloped website. With lots of growth, there has been lots of office talk regarding compensation and pay. Hank arrives at work to find that a disgruntled employee that was let go had broken into the HR system and released 165 employees’ salaries overnight to the entire company. Hank now has many angry employees and a petrified executive team that has to manage it. Now Hank and his team have to decide how to put some of the fire out on this disaster.

         Hank and his team have an interesting concept to continue to keep the salaries and bonuses public. Many large publically traded companies and non-profits are required to release information on their top salaries and commissions. In some way this does hold not only the company accountable for fair pay but also the employees to truly analyze their income. Hank says, “we wanted employees to understand our costs and learn to think like businesspeople. Well, here in head- quarters our biggest cost is payroll. Employees as partners in the business and that we’ll entrust them with the same information every senior manager already has access to that is, what people make.” (Case, J., 2001, pg. 3). In some way it makes the employees they have a shared interest in the way the budgets run if the company releases regular income information. The releasing a sharing of this information could change the culture of the workplace. Is the company being lead by authentic londers and can you trust the leadership is often a dilemma in company env

• Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2013). Creating the best workplace on earth. HBR, 91(5), 98-106. - HBR

Simply put, people will not follow a leader they feel is inauthentic. But the executives we questioned made it clear that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization. Pg 3ro

The organization of your dreams does not deceive, stonewall, distort, or spin. It recognizes that in the age of Facebook, WikiLeaks, and Twitter, you’re bet- ter o telling people the truth before someone else does. It respects its employees’ need to know what’s really going on so that they can do their jobs, particu- larly in volatile environments where it’s already dif- cult to keep everyone aligned and where workers at all levels are being asked to think more strategically.