Talking about salaries in the office: a fading taboo

According to a recent survey conducted by the employment website Hellowork, 54% of employees say they are comfortable discussing remuneration with their colleagues, compared to… 17% in 2019.

Another study published Thursday, conducted by YouGov for the recruitment firm PageGroup, shows that seven in ten employees are prepared to ask for the median salary of their colleagues.

“Over the last 3-4 years, we have really seen a paradigm shift on the part of candidates, and partly on the part of employers, in terms of addressing remuneration issues in a clearer manner.“, Laurent Blanchard, general director of PageGroup France, told AFP.

“A job offer that mentions a salary range has 30 to 50% more applications“, he said, while 40% of candidates would not apply for a job where the salary is not specified, according to the study.

Historically, “As the subject was sensitive, it seemed difficult to talk about it and companies communicated little“, says Delphine Landeroin, director of remuneration projects at LHH, a company specializing in HR consulting. But for several years, they have “understood that it is not enough to develop remuneration mechanisms, but that they must also be communicated and explained“.

“At the same time, the new generations (Y, Z, etc.) mean that over the years, it is less and less taboo: employees talk about it more freely among themselves.” she said.

Anne, a finance executive, confirms that within her group, “Younger people have no problem discussing money issues with managers“.

“It’s quite new, I don’t remember daring to talk very frankly about money with my bosses.“, says this forty-year-old who prefers to remain anonymous.

In a post titled “The one who was no longer afraid to talk about money”, Joséphine Adjagbenon recently listed on LinkedIn what was holding her back, such as the fear that it would be “perceived as a sign of greed”.

Having worked as a self-employed press officer for almost eight years, she explained to AFP that she now speaks about it “quite freely”, whereas when she had “the codes of employment”, it was “quite hidden”.

Why this evolution?

For Jean-François Amadieu, professor of human resources management at Paris 1, “we could talk about a sort of Americanization.”

And with recruitment tensions, the balance of power between candidates and employers”has reversed a bit“giving “more power” to employees to request this type of information,” observes Laurent Blanchard.

Benoît Serre, vice-president of the National Association of HR Directors, also points out an effect of social networks: “People talk about their lives on websites, make videos (…), there is no reason why salaries should not be affected“.

While “Salary remains the primary reason for joining a company“, “For a long time, we were in a kind of hypocritical model where we said nothing as if it were a state secret.“, he notes.

Even during a career, “people no longer hesitate to make demands or make their own comparisons” relying on sites like Glassdoor, among others, according to him.

A movement that should accelerate further with the 2023 European directive on the transparency of remuneration which must be transposed by June 2026.

In addition to publishing salary ranges for candidates, it provides in particular that employees will be able to request “information on their individual remuneration levels and on average remuneration levels“employees with work of “equal value”.

Tomorrow, “everyone will be able to access information that was not accessible in the vast majority of companies“, says Laurent Termignon, director of the Work and Rewards activity at WTW.

But Benoit Serre warns against a “tendency to align salaries“, while employees are also demanding “individual recognition”.

Even if for the moment, according to the Yougov survey, the directive is not known by one in two companies.

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