[empika]

We have open books at the agency I work for. Its pretty darn good to be honest. No one is over paid and no one is underpaid. We are paid what we and the rest of the company think we are worth. Simple.

Well, kinda simple. When having an annual review you must present your personal development plan of what you have achieved in the past year, what you hope to achieve in the next year (and possibly beyond) along with how much of a raise you want. You then have a meeting with a review committee consisting of two normal staff and two directors where you discuss how fair and equitable it is to you and your colleagues, whether it is affordable for the company and whether it would be attractive to a potential new hire hypothetically replacing you. Proposing your own salary makes you really think about what you are worth, and if you want a higher salary can really motivate you into proving that worth and not just being a bum on a chair.

Its a lengthy process but everyone is pretty happy with it (there are few things that getted tweaked everytime soneone has a review but its an ongoing process of improvement). There is no way you can be paid to much or too little as someone on the committee will complain and your proposal wont get signed off. For example, a member of the board had to go back to the committee 4 times until they accepted his proposal, each time honing their salary level and what they will be doing for the company in return.

I'm not sure that opening your books like the article says is the best way to go. Salaries in most places are unbalanced and letting everyone know that would lead to proven disaster. It would be best to try and get them inline before opening them up for the employees to see, although i'm not sure how you would do this. Its just a shame the article make no mention of how great open salaries are.

ps, look up Ricardo Semler and Semco for en example of open salaries on a LARGE scale. Its not just little agencies that this can work for!

[empika]

Great book by Ricardo Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_%28book%29

All companies should be based on this.