The growth of remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic made the technology job market significantly more complex. Some companies desire a return to the office, while many employees prefer working from home.
These differing viewpoints ultimately led to the current Great Resignation. At the same time, a desire for salary transparency also adds to this confusion. Notably, significant pay gaps exist in the IT world. Any gender pay gap also hampers a business’s efforts to create a more diverse workforce. Additionally, companies located in high-cost-of-living regions also want to pay remote workers less. So let’s look more closely at the efforts for salary transparency in this hybrid tech job market.
Fighting For Compensation Fairness in Difficult Times
Upstart businesses in the tech industry continue to lead the way in championing salary transparency. They feel this approach also helps reduce the gender pay gap making it difficult to foster workforce diversity. In fact, even the US and UK governments are considering legislation aimed at salary disclosure.
Ruth Thomas, pay equity strategist for the software platform Payscale, commented on the difference tech startups make in transparency. “Increasingly, there is a demand for transparent pay ranges that people understand, as a mechanism to ensure fairness of compensation. Tech startups really have been leaders in pay transparency with their open wage systems,” Thomas said.
In fact, many newer tech companies, like Buffer, Gitlab, and Whereby, publish their pay rate formulas publicly. The ultimate goal relates to closing the gender pay gap, as noted earlier. Notably, Buffer saw a significant improvement, closing its gap from 15 percent to 5.5 percent over 2020 to 2021.
Pay Transparency For Remote Workers
At the same time, this approach also adds clarity for remote workers residing in lower-cost-of-living areas. In fact, some larger tech companies want to pay remote workers less compared to their office staff. This especially matters for companies located in a high-cost-of-living region, like Silicon Valley or Boston.
Having a pay transparency policy in place makes this an easier ask for these companies. It places the onus on workers to decide where they want to work and for whom. This decision becomes simplified when pay rate formulas are available for analysis.
Salary transparency ultimately plays a crucial role in driving employee engagement. In an IT job market favoring workers, improved staffing and retention definitely benefits forward-looking companies.
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