Equal Pay

[andrewducker]

News here that companies have been told that length of service is _not_ a good enough reason to pay people more.

And, I have to say, about bloody time too.

True, longer service can lead to greater levels of experience and thus better productivity and usefulness from an employee - but it doesn't have to. If someone is being more productive/useful then they should be rewarded for that - paying them for length of service is jut a lazy way to avoid thinking about someone's actual contribution.

It also biases the system against women. It's very easy to justify paying women less when you can point out they've taken a year (or two) off to raise kids - but unless that has an actual, demonstrable affect on their levels of productivity, it's irrelevant.

Comments

[andrewducker]

If you're rewarding person A for sticking about then give them a reward - a bonus for doing so, or make up the pay that they lost in the cut. Paying them more year-on-year for doing the same work isn't the right way to reward them for single actions.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

But what if you want to reward continuing loyalty? Because hiring and training people costs a lot of money, you'd prefer to have low staff turnover. It also leads to a nicer workplace environment, so how do you do that apart from rewarding people for staying? A yearly bonus based on how long they've stuck around? That's the same as paying them more for sticking with the company.

I'm still not saying the law is right-minded to stop people using time-served as an indicator for pay, but I still think that perfectly sensible time-serve-related attributes that companies actively like will be unfairly challenged.

[andrewducker]

And I think it's exactly this they're trying to discourage - rewarding people just for hanging about.

And I have to agree that rewarding people for just this is a terrible idea - recruitment costs make it worthwhile to keep people on for a bit, but not indefinitely. And if it's expensive to replace someone whose been there for 6 years it's equally as expensive to replace someone whose been there a year.

If by sticking about they've become more knowledgable and better at their job, reward them for _that_.