In what countries is it custom to openly discuss salary? In Germany and most if not all countries I’ve been to professionally it is not the norm. This is of course bad for transparency/employees and good for employers.
All of scandinavia. There are public registers where you can look up the salary of everyone for norway, sweden and finland. When these registers were introduced, the salaries were normalized across the whole population
Germany has a principle of equal treatment. The only way to ensure this is respected is to discuss wages. There is a legal precedent that makes it completely unambiguous that discussing wages is protected. It may be uncomfortable, but that’s just social pressure, encouraged by companies.
Where I live we don’t really discuss salaries and I think that mostly comes down to society being tricked into believing it’s a bad thing. However our national statistics agency has made salary statistics public, which means anyone easily check their salary range and see if they’re being underpaid. I actually prefer that to discussing with co-workers because you end up getting a much better picture of your industry.
In what countries is it custom to openly discuss salary? In Germany and most if not all countries I’ve been to professionally it is not the norm. This is of course bad for transparency/employees and good for employers.
All of scandinavia. There are public registers where you can look up the salary of everyone for norway, sweden and finland. When these registers were introduced, the salaries were normalized across the whole population
Germany has a principle of equal treatment. The only way to ensure this is respected is to discuss wages. There is a legal precedent that makes it completely unambiguous that discussing wages is protected. It may be uncomfortable, but that’s just social pressure, encouraged by companies.
https://www.hensche.de/Rechtsanwalt_Arbeitsrecht_Urteile_AGB_LAG_Mecklenburg-Vorpommern_2Sa237-09.html
Where I live we don’t really discuss salaries and I think that mostly comes down to society being tricked into believing it’s a bad thing. However our national statistics agency has made salary statistics public, which means anyone easily check their salary range and see if they’re being underpaid. I actually prefer that to discussing with co-workers because you end up getting a much better picture of your industry.