The Wage Blame Game

Today I joined Syndio on a webinar about employer brand and pay equity -- addressing whether pay is an important component in your employer brand. Sure, it's table stakes. Work puts food on our tables and a roof over our heads. And yet we're still pitting fair pay against economics. Is that even a fair battle?

Before we went on, I read UPS CEO Carol B. Tomé's comments about #wages in this New York Times Corner Office post:

"I should say, because no one is ever happy with their compensation. So when we look at employee satisfaction scores, some of the lowest scores are on compensation, because no one is ever happy with that. But I’m not hearing stories from our people that they can’t get by."

Of course not.

How many minimum wage workers are going to risk admitting something like that for fear of losing hours or other retaliation, or feel comfortable enough to admit something so vulnerable? Imagine trying to feed your family, carrying the burden of giving them what they need, and watching your bank account with fear and trepidation every day. Would you risk "sharing your story with the CEO" even if there were actual venues to share it?

And let's talk about those venues. Those spaces we give employees to share feedback. Employee sat surveys don't allow any space to be vulnerable. Would I share the fact I can't feed my family in a 250-character count white space that goes to a meaningless database and an unnamed person(s)? These surveys are ego-driven, based on benchmarks that allow leaders to feel good about team satisfaction. But they tell us nothing about the people themselves. Imagine if we only collected customer satisfaction data, but knew nothing else about our customers.

Finally, let's stop with the assumptive platitudes. Plenty of people are happy with their compensation. I know that because we see it our research all the time. Actual data from actual F500 employees all over the world who tell us their employers pay them well.

And when they don't, we give them the rich, vulnerable data to act on if they choose. Last year we had a multi-billion dollar manufacturing client brave enough to really listen to how their workers felt about compensation and not chalk it up to "well, everyone wants more." Turns out, they really just wanted the same 401(k) their management counterparts had. The opportunity to save for, and sustain, themselves and their families. It was the first time the executive team had heard this. If that team had relied on assumptions and "we're not hearing the stories," they wouldn't have known. Guess who now has a 401(k)?

CEOs, you can do better. Of course, you have a responsibility to your shareholders and to increase revenues. But beyond that, beyond politics, union or non-union, don't play it off as "I'm not hearing about it" or hide behind the economic arguments.

My job is not to tell CEOs how to run their business, ignore economics or capitalism, or take a political stand. But it is my job to illuminate blind spots and this is a big one.

Ultimately, employees will seek out ways to vocalize their opinions--whether through sat surveys, through unions, or through resignation. And you'll hear it in your bottom line when you see that true P&L impact of hourly worker turnover and re-recruiting.

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Susan LaMotte is the founder and CEO of exaqueo, an employer brand consulting firm working with F500 clients all over the world. In 2006, she did her MBA internship at The Home Depot where she listened to then-CFO Carol Tomè's session on leadership.