Vincit – Salary transparency increases trust
At Vincit, employees have been given the opportunity to publish their own payroll for nearly a decade. The open wage model was implemented in order to achieve a fairer wages and increase transparency. At Vincit, the open pay model includes pay weeks that are held once or twice a year and allow the employee to choose whether to publish their pay or not.
Purpose
The societal debate on wages has increased in recent years. In addition to financial security, a lot of personal and symbolic meanings are attached to wages. However, data on wages collected from different sources can cause distortions: one might compare their own wage to such information whose background factors and details are not known in detail.
Vincit has sought to support transparency and an open dialogue on salaries by providing an opportunity to publish one’s own salary during regular pay weeks. With this information, the employee and the teams have been able to check whether their own salary is in line with others and correct any distortions.
Results
In the early years, about 85–93% of Vincit’s employees shared their payroll information, and in 2020, depending on the unit, about 50–85%. The transparency of the payroll model in a growing company requires constant consideration into whether most employees want to share their payroll information across the organization or to a smaller group, and how precisely the payroll is to be reported.
Implementation
At Vincit, the open salary model includes salary weeks that are held once or twice a year. During pay weeks, an employee can choose whether to publish their own pay for others to see. Publishing one’s own salary is everyone’s own decision, but most Vincit’s employees have wanted to do it. Previously, salaries were published with first and last names for the entire company. In 2020, the publication was made with first and last names by business unit, in addition to which an anonymous compilation was distributed to the entire company.
Wage weeks also essentially include proposals for wage increases. Once wages are published, any Vincit’s employee may choose to propose salary increases to those who deserve it. The reason for the salary increase is the value generated by the person for the customer project or work community. You can also ask for a salary increase for yourself. Following the wage proposals, Vincit’s superiors and HR will review the proposals and decide on increases.
Vincit is a very interesting project that challenges many existing practices regarding HR and salary practices, including reward, bonuses, or salary increase.
However I think this project needs to work out its approach, meaning not to use a copy paste of the principle " for the same job, same salary". Also the project does not mention how to take care of the gender pay gap, measurement of performance and the outlook beyond local (finnish) cultural dimensions.
Responses