Pay: What If You Knew What Your Colleagues Earned?

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Discussing pay is one of society’s big taboos - it’s just not the done thing to ask other people what they earn. And it can be even more hush-hush in the workplace - we’re not told to keep quiet, but somehow everyone does. And yet, most of us would love to know what our colleagues earn.

So would lifting the lid on salaries trigger resentment and frustration, or be a tool for fairness and accountability? Evan Davis explores the pros and cons of pay transparency — from closing gender pay gaps to boosting retention – and speaks to one boss who’s tried a radical approach.

Is it the next frontier in corporate accountability, or does the culture of secrecy still serve a purpose? Evan is joined by: Bob Leung, CEO, Grant Tree; Justine Woolf, Director of Consulting, Innecto; Clare Kelliher, Professor of Work and Organisation, Cranfield University School of Management. Production team: Producer: Osman Iqbal Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Neil Churchill and Pete Wise Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.1	Thanks for downloading this episode of The Bottom Line podcast.
0:08.4	Has lots of extra content in it that we couldn't squeeze into the radio version.
0:12.8	If you like it, you might want to check out another episode about the workplace called
0:18.1	A Four Day Week, Less Work for More people. That was in January this year.
0:23.2	And today a subject some of us perhaps find awkward to discuss, impolite even, but nevertheless,
0:28.7	something many of us are desperate to know about, pay. Do you like talking about it? The answer is
0:34.3	probably yes and no. It's a fascinating topic, particularly finding out what
0:39.1	other people are paid. You may be more reluctant to talk about what you're paid. So we thought
0:45.4	we should make that our focus. Should we just open up, try to avoid the potential for workplace
0:50.8	grumbles and make pay levels totally transparent. Now, in some other places they've
0:56.6	done this in Norway, you can look at anyone else's tax return and thus see what they earn,
1:01.7	just like you can see the price of houses that are sold in this country via the land registry.
1:07.8	Does pay transparency end the arguments over pay or does it start the arguments over pay?
1:14.6	And all of this perhaps matters as the EU is about to introduce a pay transparency directive,
1:20.6	which could have implications for British companies.
1:23.6	Now there are plenty of routine jobs where pay is public and known.
1:26.6	There are some, like here at the BBC, where pay above a certain level is public.
1:31.3	Oh, and chief executives, too, their pay is in the annual report.
1:35.3	But it isn't the norm in our country.
1:37.3	So let's find out what difference it makes.
1:40.3	And we have three guests to help us with this, with lots of experience in this area of pay.
	...

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