knowing others salary is counterproductive IME
In a recent past life I was on a team that was evaluating everyone's salary and as a result we had available all the salary information but anonymity was preserved by not providing names linked to each salary. As a result we could look at a team of people and understand the average salary + bonus +profit sharing + commissions.....assumptions could be made about which one compensation number would be Joe Jones, but quite frankly we had well over 100,000 people to look at so there was never time to really worry about if Joe made more than Suzy etc.
What did come out of the study was unpleasant to me. Firstly I discovered that neither performance nor tenure seemed to drive $$$ across most of the organizations. Secondly, there was a huge range between compensation paid for people doing the same job. I had always thought I was reasonably paid for the work I did, always had top evaluations, had tenure if you will ,and was senior in my position. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was the 2nd lowest paid person on my team, and it appears as if my near associate was compensated at nearly 3x my rate.
Trust tends to go out the window, doubts creep in, and human nature tends to make matters worse, not better. Ultimately I left for greener pastures where I was compensated more like my former associate.
