Is the employee's salary paid secretly or publicly? Ask for expert guidance!

The original intention of "dense salary system" is to reduce employees' sense of unfairness, let employees know the career development channel, and at the same time avoid employees from having negative psychology.

It is contrary to our traditional culture to reduce the negative psychology brought by personal salary comparison through the system. In traditional China society, the psychological distance between people is much closer than that of westerners, and the space for personal privacy is much smaller than that of western society. It is common for relatives, friends and colleagues to inquire about their income. The "dense salary system" comes from the west and needs a process of integration with eastern culture. In fact, Japanese companies whose culture is more similar to ours are also implementing the personal salary secrecy system. In many domestic enterprises, there are also many companies that implement the "secret salary system" very well, such as Lenovo Group, which stipulates that it is strictly forbidden to ask each other about salary. Please leave the company once they violate it. All these prove that the "secret salary system" is not incompatible with our culture.

Both "secret salary system" and "clear salary system" belong to the category of salary information management or salary communication in salary management, that is, how to communicate with employees about the salary system. The fundamental purpose is to let employees feel the fairness of salary through communication, let employees know what the enterprise encourages and does not encourage, stimulate their enthusiasm for work, and urge them to strive to achieve their work goals.

Enterprises should carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the two compensation systems when implementing "intensive compensation system" or "clear compensation system".

Implementing the "secret salary system" has the following advantages: it can prevent employees from keeping up with the joneses in salary; It is convenient for enterprises to control labor costs; Can maintain the flexibility of enterprise salary execution, such as recruiting or retaining useful talents as needed; Can reduce the "trouble" of salary adjustment or bonus distribution communication; The privacy of personal income information can be protect. The implementation of "secret salary system" also has some limitations: it is easy to block the normal performance communication between superiors and subordinates; It is easy to distort the relationship between salary and performance; It is easy to cause HR to lose the sense of urgency to improve management level; It is easy to encourage subordinates to please superiors: "dense salary" is easy to cause internal contradictions or brain drain.

The advantages of implementing the "clear salary system" are: it can ensure that employees have enough right to know and participate in their own vital interests; It can improve employees' trust in the enterprise and effectively stimulate their enthusiasm for work; Can let employees know the key work emphasized by the enterprise; It can enhance the incentive effect brought by the correlation between salary and performance. The limitations of implementing the "clear salary system" are: it is easy to distract attention to calm the "noise" in salary adjustment or bonus distribution; Strong salary rigidity is not conducive to enterprises to control labor costs; It is not conducive to maintaining the flexibility of enterprise salary execution; It is not conducive to the management to establish leadership authority.

"Two benefits are the most important and two disadvantages are the least." Through the comparison between "secret salary system" and "clear salary system", it is difficult to simply judge who is superior and who is inferior. Different enterprises need to make specific analysis and selection according to the objective reality and actual needs, combined with specific conditions such as corporate culture, strategy, organization, performance and personnel.

Second, can it be a "secret salary"

From the legal point of view, China's "Labor Law" and related laws and regulations do not stipulate that the salary of enterprises must be open, nor do they prohibit enterprises from keeping the salary confidential. The law treats the "secret salary system" and the "open salary system" equally.

From a practical point of view, successful enterprises that implement "dense salary system" and "clear salary system" also have their own examples. Relatively speaking, state-owned enterprises implement the "clear salary system" and foreign-funded enterprises and private enterprises implement the "dark salary system".

From the perspective of management foundation, the basis for the good implementation of the "secret salary system" abroad is the performance-oriented corporate culture, meticulous performance management, objective performance evaluation and the implementation of performance interviews. Whether the "secret salary system" can be implemented depends on whether the enterprise has the basic conditions such as corporate culture, performance management, performance appraisal and performance interview needed to implement the "secret salary system".

From the perspective of employee structure, the "secret salary system" requires relatively high quality and cultural level of employees. Such as consulting industry, scientific research institutes, design units and some foreign-funded enterprises. Employees of these enterprises think that personal salary information belongs to personal privacy and generally don't ask each other. At least, they can accept the practice of "secret salary" without obviously opposing or even intensifying internal contradictions. In domestic general manufacturing enterprises, people often like to compare with others and have the habit of asking about other people's wages, so it may be more practical to implement "clear salary".

Based on the above analysis, whether the enterprise can implement the "intensive compensation system" needs to focus on the management foundation and employee structure of the enterprise.

Third, how to get the "secret salary"

The core idea of "secret salary system" is that "the salary system is open and the personal salary is confidential", which are two basic assumptions made by "secret salary system" and two basic principles for its implementation.

The assumption that personal salary is confidential actually comes from foreign companies. The main reason is that western culture respects personal privacy and Adams' "fairness theory", pointing out that when a person makes achievements and gets paid, he not only cares about the absolute amount of his own reward, but also cares about the relative amount of his own reward. Therefore, he has to make various comparisons to determine whether his remuneration is reasonable, and the results of the comparison will directly affect his enthusiasm for future work.

The disclosure of salary system is based on the assumption of employee career development. In an enterprise, every employee has his own career direction. In order to encourage employees to climb to a higher career ladder, enterprises should design and publish the salary system of each job sequence, so that employees can develop their professional ability upwards, and have the motivation and clear direction to climb upwards.

Many enterprises do not understand the original intention and core idea of "dense salary system" and often adopt a "one size fits all" approach. Or implement the policy of keeping the salary system and individual salary confidential, and there is no corresponding system to restrain it in the implementation. Finally, you will find it impossible to keep secrets, so you complain that the "secret salary system" is not applicable in China; Or don't understand the intention of "secret salary system", avoid negative psychology of employees, simply disclose employees' personal salary information and salary system, and employees keep up with the joneses, which gradually breeds dissatisfaction and lowers morale.

No matter "secret salary system" or "open salary system", it is necessary to have a reasonable salary structure and salary level as the basis, and it cannot be discussed and blindfolded one by one in the enterprise. Enterprises need to follow the principles of "three fairness (internal fairness, external fairness and self-fairness)" and "three matching" (that is, personal salary should match the relative value of internal positions, external market value and scarcity, and employee performance) within the budget.

Enterprises also need to establish a performance management system that matches the salary system, encourage employees at all levels to fulfill their duties, actively contribute to the company's profitability and development, implement the "ability+performance" salary system, and cultivate a healthy competitive atmosphere based on ability and performance to obtain high salaries.