评论
打印
Business
商业版块
Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Knowing what your colleagues earn
知道同事赚多少
The pros and cons of greater pay transparency.
提高薪资透明度的利与弊。
How much do your colleagues get paid?
你的同事们挣多少钱？
In a few countries, such as Norway, you can take a good guess by looking at public records on individuals’ overall tax payments and income.
在一些国家，比如挪威，你可以通过查看个人整体纳税和收入的公开记录而猜个八九不离十。
But in most places, finding out people’s salaries means asking them what they earn.
但是在大多数地方，想弄清楚人们的工资意味着要询问他们挣多少钱。
And that is about as socially acceptable as saying “What an ugly baby.”
而问出这句话就像说出“这孩子真丑”一样，在社交上是不可接受的。
In a recent study Zo? Cullen of Harvard Business School and Ricardo Perez-Truglia of the University of California, Los Angeles, offered monetary rewards to employees of a South-East Asian bank if they were able to accurately estimate the wages of some of their peers.
在最近的一项研究中，哈佛商学院的佐伊·卡伦和加州大学洛杉矶分校的里卡多·佩雷斯-特鲁利亚让一家东南亚银行的员工估计同事的工资，如果估计准确，就给他们金钱奖励。
The researchers found that a majority of employees were very uncomfortable asking colleagues about their pay and were also unwilling to reveal their own salaries to their colleagues, particularly if they thought they might be earning more than them.
研究人员发现，大多数员工都认为询问同事的工资让人感到很不自在，而且也不愿意向同事透露自己的工资，尤其是当他们认为自己的工资可能比同事高时。
Norms of privacy and secrecy around income help explain why legislators who fret about unfair pay differentials increasingly require greater transparency.
围绕收入隐私和保密的社会规范有助于解释，为什么那些担心不公平薪酬差异的立法者越来越要求提高透明度。
Few jurisdictions are as radical as the Scandinavians, but more and more of them are mandating that firms disclose gender (and other) wage gaps, publish pay ranges on job adverts or refrain from asking about applicants’ prior earnings.
很少有司法管辖区像斯堪的纳维亚各国那样激进，但越来越多的国家要求公司披露性别（和其他方面的）工资差距、在招聘广告上公布薪资范围，或避免询问求职者以前的收入。
New transparency laws take effect in Illinois, Minnesota and Vermont this year; an EU directive is due to come into force in 2026.
伊利诺伊州、明尼苏达州和佛蒙特州的透明度新法于今年生效，欧盟的一项指令也将于2026年生效。
A recent review by Ms Cullen into the effects of all this sunlight reveals a mixed picture.
卡伦最近对所有这些透明度政策的影响进行了审查，结果喜忧参半。
Greater transparency about what people in similar jobs are earning has helped close pay gaps between men and women.
对于从事类似工作的人的薪资透明度提高有助于缩小男女之间的薪酬差距。
This is not because lower-paid employees were given big pay bumps, however, but because average wages were suppressed.
但这并不是因为低薪员工获得了大幅加薪，而是因为平均工资被压低。
Transparency appears to hand employers a powerful bargaining tool: firms can argue that a pay rise for one individual would need to be replicated for others.
透明度似乎给雇主提供了一个强有力的谈判工具：公司可以争辩说，给一个人的加薪也需要给其他人。
A Danish law from 2006, requiring that firms above a certain size disclose gender pay gaps among comparable workers, provides an example.
2006年丹麦的一项法律规定，一定规模以上的公司必须披露可比员工之间的性别薪酬差距，这项规定就是一个例子。
In a paper published in 2019 Morten Bennedsen of INSEAD and his co-authors found that the gap between men and women narrowed, primarily because male employees saw slower wage growth.
欧洲工商管理学院的莫滕·本内森及其合著者在2019年发表的一篇论文中发现，男女之间的薪酬差距缩小了，主要是因为男性员工的工资增长放缓。
A lower wage bill is not necessarily good news for firms, however.
然而，较低的工资支出对公司来说不一定是好消息。
Productivity at affected Danish firms also went down, perhaps because lower earners were fed up to discover they were undervalued or because higher earners resented the slower wage growth that followed.
受影响的丹麦公司的生产率也下降了，也许是因为低收入者厌倦了自己的价值被低估，或者是因为高收入者对后来的工资增长放缓感到不满。
Disclosure can lead to different outcomes.
披露工资可能导致不同的结果。
Requirements to include salary details on job postings appear to push up pay, for example, in part because firms as well as employees have better information about market rates.
例如，要求在招聘信息中包含薪资细节似乎会推高工资，部分原因是公司和员工都更好地了解市场费率。
It is surely worth paying a bit more to avoid wasting time on job applicants whose salary expectations bear no resemblance to budgets.
一些求职者的薪资期望与公司预算完全不符，为了避免在这些人身上浪费时间，多花一点钱肯定是值得的。
Transparency can also stoke motivation.
透明度也可以激发动力。
A recent paper by Cédric Gutierrez of Bocconi University and his co-authors found that pay transparency among American academics increased the effort of those who were revealed to be overpaid.
博科尼大学的塞德里克·古铁雷斯及其合著者最近发表的一篇论文发现，美国学术界的薪酬透明度让那些被发现薪酬过高的人工作更加努力。
If you’re earning a lot more than others, you’d better prove your worth.
如果你赚得比别人多很多，那么你最好能证明自己值这么多钱。
As for wage disparities between bosses and those below them, you might imagine that gaps foster resentment.
至于老板和下属之间的工资差距，你可能认为差距会滋生怨恨。
But they can also pique aspiration.
但差距也能激发抱负。
Other research by Ms Cullen and Mr Perez-Truglia suggests that employees not only consistently underestimate how much managers earn but also work harder when they find out the rewards that promotion can bring.
卡伦和佩雷斯-特鲁利亚的其他研究表明，员工不仅一直低估经理的收入，而且当他们发现晋升可以带来多少回报时，他们会工作更加努力。
Transparency makes it more important to get performance-based pay right.
透明度使得制定恰当的基于绩效的薪酬制度变得更加重要。
A recent paper by James Flynn of Miami University looked at what happened when the previously secret salaries of ice-hockey players in North America were published in the middle of the 1990 season.
迈阿密大学的詹姆斯·弗林最近发表的一篇论文研究了在20世纪90年代赛季期间，当北美冰球运动员之前保密的薪水被公布时发生了什么。
Underpaid players shifted their efforts towards scoring goals and providing assists, which were more highly rewarded than defensive contributions, to the detriment of their teams’ performances as a whole.
薪酬较低的球员将努力转向了进球和提供助攻，这些比防守方面的贡献能得到更高的回报，而这种变化损害了球队的整体表现。
Pay transparency offers prizes and pitfalls for managers, in other words.
换言之，薪酬透明为管理者带来了好处和陷阱。
If things go well, it ought to close unjust pay gaps and provide workers with more information on their options inside and outside their firms.
如果进展顺利，薪酬透明应该会缩小不公正的薪酬差距，并为工作者提供更多关于他们在公司内外有哪些选择的信息。
If things go badly, morale and productivity may suffer as the pursuit of equity catalyses slower wage growth; performance-based pay may converge on things that are easier to measure, not what matters most.
如果进展糟糕，随着追求公平导致工资增长放缓，士气和生产率可能会受到影响，基于绩效的薪酬可能会集中在更容易衡量的工作上，而不是最重要的工作上。
Sunlight is lovely. It can still cause damage.
阳光是可爱的，但它依然可能造成损害。
