Making compensation a cultural asset

Pay is one of the last workplace taboos. In too many companies, compensation lives behind closed doors, with outdated structures and unexplained decisions. 

This leads to suspicion, disengagement, and weaker retention.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Compensation can become a cultural asset which drives trust, engagement, and retention.

In this article, we’ll show how pay transparency builds trust when paired with progression and how to balance openness with the realities of scarce talent.

Why secrecy breeds suspicion 

When employees don’t understand how pay is decided, they fill the gaps with assumptions. Often, those assumptions aren’t generous.

Research from MIT Sloan shows that perceived pay unfairness is one of the strongest predictors of turnover intent. Even if salaries are competitive, secrecy makes people believe they’re being undervalued.

The impact is cultural as well as financial. Secrecy creates:

• Distrust. Employees suspect favouritism or bias.
• Reduced engagement. People stop going the extra mile if they think rewards aren’t fairly distributed.
• Retention risk. Top performers quietly scan the market for roles where pay is clearer.

Transparency builds trust, but only with structure

Simply publishing everyone’s salary is a blunt tool. Transparency without context can create just as much frustration as secrecy. 

Structured transparency can be more effective, which combines openness on pay with clear progression paths.

That means:

• Pay bands, not random numbers. Employees see the ranges for each role level.
• Progression criteria. People know exactly what skills, outcomes, or behaviours move them up the band.
• Consistency across teams. Similar roles are rewarded similarly, regardless of department or personal negotiation power.

Buffer, the social media software company, has been fully transparent on salaries since 2013. 

They publish formulas for pay, showing how factors like experience, role, and location are calculated. The result is less suspicion and a greater focus on performance.

Structure turns pay into a roadmap employees can trust.

Balancing transparency with talent realities

Of course, startups face practical challenges. In competitive markets, attracting scarce talent often means stretching beyond your usual pay bands. 

If you’ve promised transparency, how do you reconcile that with one-off offers?

The answer is to be open about the philosophy behind exceptions. For example:

• Flag roles where market scarcity means higher offers.
• Separate market forces pay from performance-based progression.
• Use equity to offset differences, so employees still feel long-term ownership.

Indeed, many high-growth companies lean on equity as the leveller,  compensating for cash constraints and aligning long-term incentives.

Transparency doesn’t mean rigidity. The goal is trust, not identical pay. If exceptions are explained openly, employees will accept them.

Turning compensation into a cultural story

Forward-looking companies are using pay structures as part of their cultural story.

• Buffer shows how pay transparency builds external employer brand credibility. Their open salary formula signals fairness and attracts candidates aligned with their values.
• Pleo, the fintech scale-up, publishes its pay philosophy openly, emphasising equity and fairness as part of its culture. This has become a recruiting differentiator.
• Gravity Payments made headlines when CEO Dan Price set a $70k minimum salary for all staff. Whatever you think of the execution, it sent a clear message: compensation was part of their mission, not just admin.

When compensation philosophy becomes part of your brand, employees trust you more, and candidates self-select based on shared values.

Summary

Compensation secrecy is a cultural liability. It fuels suspicion, disengagement, and attrition. In contrast, transparency with structure can turn pay into one of your strongest cultural assets.

The shift isn’t about publishing everyone’s payslip. It’s about:

• Replacing secrecy with structured openness.
• Pairing transparency with progression clarity.
• Explaining exceptions instead of hiding them.
• Using compensation philosophy as part of your cultural brand.

SMEs that make this shift will find compensation can become a strategy that fuels retention, engagement, and long-term growth.

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