I love the Rad HR compensation model discussed here ( Socially-just pay and anti-oppression work in practice | RadHR ) and need-based compensation, in general. But one thing I’ve been confused about – if you base compensation off of factors that can change (# of dependents, disability), can you revise the compensation downward? I think that it should be revised downward if your dependents are now all grown up, or you no longer have that disability, or you moved to a much more affordable place, but can organizations get away with this? It seems like it would draw too many questions from HR. Plus I’m guessing staff might be grumpy about it.
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Hi @karenl - thanks for the thoughts on this. The adjustments do go down if people’s circumstances change in all the socially-just wage policies I know. In my situation, for example, I have a nursery age kid, but in September they will start school, and I won’t be paying out nearly as much in nursery bills each month, so my uplift will drop to reflect my real costs. So in real terms, I shouldn’t be worse off at that point (likely better, because the uplift doesn’t nearly cover extortionate nursery bills!).
But in my experience, the bigger question you’re getting at - how people respond to adjustments - is about the process of moving to more equitable pay, and how bought into the model people are. If it’s imposed on them, I can definitely see that it would be harder to make the case that wages will go up and down, as your circumstances change. But if there is a more involved process, where people feel invested in what the model is trying to do, then I’ve never found it to be a problem.
But I’m keen to hear how folks like @Tanya @Jaybird @CGage @OrtGallery or others w/ SJ waging/equitable/needs based pay have found the transitions if anyone’s wage has dropped at some point in their orgs?
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Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I realize my question is two-fold and I wasn’t clear about that. One aspect is the ‘how do humans deal with it?’ and the other aspect is ‘will HR even allow salaries to go down?’. Our org is fiscally sponsored so we have to play by the rules of their HR department. The picture that I get is that HR gets nervous when we talk about salaries going down. I presume they’re worried that it increases the chance of some kind of employment-related lawsuit. Any experience with that aspect of it?
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Might be a bit late for the specific instance you’re thinking of, but .. would it help (or even be possible) to show the basic salary and the uplift elements separately on the payslip? Then the worker is reminded that a part of their wage is for a specific issue, and should be unsurprised when they’re notified that it’s coming to an end
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I’d be interested if there were any examples of SJ pay policies being taken to tribunals before… I’ve definitely never heard of it happening, which is hopefully reflective of the group cultures where I’m aware of the policy approach being implemented. But can still definitely see how most trad HR will see such things through a risk lens, and that positive group culture isn’t always seen as the risk mitigator that it so often is. Would also be keen to hear if there were other examples folks had of additional steps to avoid HR worries about rates of pay changing w/ SJ pay policies? PIRC and Platform are the two groups that I am guessing would have some thoughts around this?
I can’t speak to the tribunal issue, but I can say that we’ve seen wages go both up and down through the Social Wages policy here. As a relatively small worker co-op, we don’t have a separate HR department to deal with (since we make these decisions collectively as worker members), which probably makes things easier! I think it also helps that our base wages are equal before we apply any uplift, so any reduction based on changing circumstances just brings us back to a horizontal situation (except in the case of gaining a massive inheritance or lottery win)