Four years ago, Michelle Hamawi arrived in Vancouver from Lebanon and found a job she thought was low paid. She says she will not do it again in the future.
The next time she looks for a job, the IT project manager wants to know what she’s getting into before applying – and that includes salary. When she first came to Canada, she was unfamiliar with the labor market and said that publicly disclosed information would be useful in the negotiations.
“You don’t want to go through the whole four-month interview process with a company just to find out in the end that the offer doesn’t match what you’re looking for or what’s actually sustainable for you,” she said.
Hamawi is one of many people in the private sector who hope to see that provincial governments require information on compensation to be included in job advertisements.
“There is no reason why this should not be revealed in the same way that it works in the public sector,” she said. “There’s no reason not to work for the private sector.”
The British Columbia NDP government, led by John Horgan, says it sees the move as a measure to reduce the gender pay gap.
Legislatively, the movement is gaining momentum in the United States. Colorado already requires pay scales in job postings. The New York requirement is set to begin in November and Washington state to follow in 2023. Several other states require information to be provided if the job seeker requests it.
And across the Atlantic, the UK government is testing a pilot project.
The pressure on companies to disclose salaries
There is a growing movement calling for companies to be more transparent about the salaries of future employees and to include them in job advertisements. After this story was first aired, New York lifted its pay transparency requirements from May to November. 2:01
Canada is at risk of falling behind
In Canada, the practice of publishing information is organic. In fact, Canada, a job posting site, says 66 percent of its ads contain some form of pay information.
But Sarah Kaplan, a business professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, says Canada is out of step with other countries when it comes to data requirements.
“I think we’re going to see this more and more, not just on big sites like Indeed, but in every company that posts a job ad,” Kaplan said.
She believes there will be more pressure to publish the range.
A recent study by Bankrate.com, a personal finance website in the United States, says young people are breaking the taboo of talking about money. Approximately 40% of Millennium and Generation Y employees have told their colleagues what they are doing.
This is compared to 31 percent of Generation X, those aged 42 to 57, but only 19 percent of the baby boom, those aged 57 to 76.
Companies see payouts
Some companies have developed a payroll disclosure policy and are pleased with the results.
In fact, Canada says companies that send payment data receive up to 90 percent more applicants.
The Vancouver-based accounting software company Bench was part of the action. The company decided to start posting pay scales in its job advertisements nine months ago and said it was already getting paid by building a relationship of trust with its employees.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of applicants,” said Spencer Miller, head of the company’s human analysis department.
Spencer Miller, head of human analytics at accounting firm Bench, says the company has achieved great results after being more open about payroll information. (Martin Diot / CBC)
He describes the current labor market as a “candidate market”. And he says that by publishing the information, they build a relationship of trust from the beginning.
“We need to make sure we attract and retain amazing people here,” Miller said.
As part of this broader drive for transparency, Bench has also begun publishing current positions and salary groups so that people working for the company have an idea of where they can go.
The company’s publications are similar to what you can already find in public or union circles, where the publication of salaries is standard practice.
“It turns out that when you do the right thing, it often generates really great results,” Miller said.
Slow process for some
But there is some reversal of the trend.
Some groups representing corporations say such policies will take time and are concerned about oversight. That was one of the reasons why New York decided on Thursday to postpone the implementation of its new rules on disclosure of salaries from May to November 2023.
Some human resources departments are still trying to comply with Colorado requirements, said Hani Mansour, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Denver.
“This creates a lot of headaches for human resources departments,” he said. “There is now a greater effort to standardize work codes, find out that you know whether the posts make sense or not. [and] what a comparable job. “
Cost of living8: 31 Is pay transparency the key to fair pay?
For many Canadians, openly discussing how much money we make is taboo. But can open sharing of our wages really change what we get and lead to more fair pay? Anis Heydari is taking a closer look at a concept called “pay transparency” – which some experts say would equalize working conditions in many jobs. 8:31
Ontario actually accepted the pay scale in job advertisements as a requirement in 2018. But the progressive Conservative government postponed that move indefinitely after it was elected.
For Hamawi, it is a matter of justice. She says some people will not know how low they are paid until salary information is made public.
“It’s a game of poker when you only have two cards out of five,” she said. “And they have all the cards.”
Add Comment