Through the Looking Glass – Salary Transparency

Up until last year, I’ve always been pretty nervous to even broach the topic of salary let alone tell anyone what I am earning! I had to force myself to ask my friends who had graduated with me what they’re currently earning as I was applying for a new job and had no idea what to ask for salary-wise.

But once I’d initiated the conversations with my peers, I actually found it a lot easier to talk about it than I’d anticipated. And with salary came perks, hours, car benefits…

Long story short, I got the job, on a higher salary that I’d been on before which I was only just brave enough to ask for. Great news. And I didn’t really think about it again until the beginning of this year.

International Women’s Day this week prompted a lot of content on my social media feeds about the gender pay gap. At the same time, SPVS posted their annual salary review, including gender differences between salaries for vets at differing years of experience.

Maybe, I hadn’t paid much attention to it before, or maybe I wasn’t as clued up about money as I am now but I couldn’t get away from the horrible feeling of injustice surrounding the stats that got flagged up.

I’ll take you through a few:

In the recent SPVS survey, with the average overall salaries compared, female veterinary surgeons were paid -21% less than male veterinary surgeons. This is up from -15% difference in 2020. Female vets were paid less than their male counterparts in all (years post graduation) subcategories, with the ‘up to 2 years qualified’ female vets suffering from earning 11% less than male vets of the same period post qualification.

As well as this, according to Female Invest, at the current pace women are progressing, it will take 257 years to close to financial gender gap!

So, what has this go to do with salary transparency?

“When people don’t know each other’s pay, they assume they are underpaid.”

Elena Belogolovsky, Assistant Professor of human resources studies at Cornell

Although salary transparency might not be the solution to all gender pay gap issues and might not work for every workplace environment, it might give women in the veterinary industry the step up to narrow the difference between them and men.

Evidence shows that listing a salary range on a job advert and not asking applicants to disclose salary history provides a firmer footing for women to negotiate pay on a fairer basis.

Pros of salary transparency:

Discussing salary with colleagues and peers, can enlighten members of staff to discrepancies between salaries for similar or the same jobs, prompting those on a lower salary to feel confident negotiating a pay-rise if they didn’t feel ready to do so before.

According to Glassdoor, 67% of people surveyed said that salary was the most important part of a job advert. Prompting the thought that it makes good business sense to share salary details at the beginning of the application process.

Not only this but showing a salary on a job advert, has lead to a significant increase in number of applicants for vacancies for companies like Buffer who publish all their salaries on an online spreadsheet every year.

Salary transparency has been proven in an experimental and real-life setting that it can increase team productivity and performance. Studies found that in two rounds of work, participants worked harder in the second round if they were exposed to information about how everyone else was being paid. In fact, high performers from the first round were the most likely to work harder in the second round to increase their earnings.

Employees may place more trust in the company they work for if they know that the company is open about salaries and they aren’t being exploited.

And finally, people who think they are being paid well have been proven to have better overall job satisfaction!

Cons of salary transparency:

Knowing that others you deem to be on a similar level of experience as you and in a similar job are earning more, can drive resentment and unhealthy competitiveness between employees.

Some employees may progress clinically quicker than others and opt to take on more roles that can improve their chances of increasing salary compared to others who are adapting to practice slower. Being open about basing salary bands on years post graduation can be troublesome in this regard and doesn’t reward those that should be rewarded for extra commitments and quick progression.

Being exposed to other people’s salaries can encourage a tunnel vision for employees and, as naturally quite competitive people on the whole, drive an unhealthy pre-occupation with their financial performance for a clinic rather than professional performance.

What do vets think?

I recently asked my followers on the ThisVetCan Instagram page to share their thoughts on salary transparency and I got some really insightful replies.

One vet brought up the moral dilemma of wanting to ask for more money but then not wanting to live up to the ‘in it for the money’ expectation that lots of animal owners seem to have. This is a really tricky one which I sympathise with. On reflection very few vets really are in it for the money due to the significant divergence in salary, with very little divergence in hours worked, compared to our human medical counterparts! Unluckily for us there is no animal NHS and therefore veterinary medical expenses seem outlandishly high to those who have not had to pay for their own before.

Another responder commented that they are happy to discuss salary with others if they initiate the conversation but admitted to not always finding it easy to start it.

In opposition, one vet felt that in smaller close-knit veterinary teams, discussing salary between them could create a divide if they found disparities between them. However that a better approach would be to trust your manager to be open with where you sat salary-wise in relation to others, why that is the case and what you can do to change that if you want to.

I feel like these are all really thought provoking ideas that illustrate how complex this can be in a real-world setting. There is absolutely no right or wrong way to approach salary and transparency is definitely something that I am keen to embrace conversation about!

What do you think? Please comment your thoughts below and share this article on your socials if you’ve found it interesting!