“Why are they paid more than me?” … The new questions from staff under the changed Pay Secrecy regulations

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Since December last year, it’s unlawful to prevent employees from discussing their pay and conditions with other employees. In fact, it’s considered an employee’s workplace right. As an employer, you can now expect questions like “Why are they paid more than me?” You’ll also need a good answer to justify the differences!

That means you’ll need a robust renumeration strategy with the level of detail normally found in big business and government departments.

 

What should be included in a remuneration strategy?

 

1.           Ascertain what others are paying

 

Cost of living pressures mean people want to be paid more and are prepared to change jobs to chase money. If you want to retain great people, you need to pay what your competitors are offering. So the first step in creating a remuneration strategy is to conduct a pay market analysis.

 

We can help you with this and once you have the data, you may need to discuss the implications with your accountant and management team because it could affect your business costs.

 

2.           Review job descriptions for each role

 

Job descriptions should detail the experience, qualifications, duties and functions of each role in your business. They are essential for matching candidates to vacancies as well as for developing pay scales by job function and seniority. Again, we can help you with this.

 

3.           Evaluate wage consistency within each job function

 

There may be good reasons why some staff are paid more than others for doing the same work, such as additional qualifications or experience. But you may be surprised to learn how often we discover unexplainable discrepancies between pay rates when we conduct these investigations for our clients.

 

With the removal of pay secrecy requirements, your staff can easily discover these discrepancies for themselves. As a result, we strongly recommend you take proactive action to avoid this type of staff confrontation.

 

4.           Match business goals to financial rewards

Finally, you need to consider your business goals and objectives so you can add things like performance incentives and bonuses, retention rewards, upskilling and training incentives etc.

 

Let’s uncover any pay discrepancies before your staff do

 

We don’t want you to face the wrath of employees when they ask, “Why are they paid more than me?” Instead, get in touch with us so we can:

 

  • Evaluate how your pay scale compares with your competitors
  • Review your job descriptions to ensure they properly reflect the duties and functions of each role
  • Assess wage consistency within each job function
  • And match your remuneration strategy with your business goals