Can We Please End the Term “Office Culture”
With the country moving into what is hopefully the last stages of the pandemic (please be the last stages) there have been lots of discussions about what the future holds for the workplace. This discussion has mainly focused on whether remote is the new way, or if everyone will be back at the office as if nothing changed. There have been some incredibly bad takes on this topic (see the CEO of Washingtonian Magazine) and some really good takes (one example in Fortune Magazine) but this isn’t an either or choice. Companies will make choices based on what they perceive to be in their best interest. However, companies and executives that fall back on outdated B.S. tropes such as “office culture” to justify those decisions should tread lightly in the coming years.
We started Trendency Research because we believe that the current approach to research is based in a world that does not exist anymore. The return to the office “debate” is also based on a world that no longer exists. Usually this type of change takes years, if not decades, but, as with many other things (looking at you Zoom), the pandemic has accelerated trends in the workplace, telescoping what otherwise might have been a decade-long tradition into a year-and-a-half. Holding on to a bygone world is never a good look, and it always leads to organizations, and people, making really bad decisions.
Discussions around the loss of “office culture” if we don’t go back to the office fall squarely into the category of “things in a bygone world” category. People espousing these views are saying “office culture” but what they are really saying is “our ability to make people feel like they should work longer hours.” Been there, done that, and if my value to the team is my ability to work through dinner, it’s probably time for me to find a new team (or a new profession). Let’s stop pretending that companies like Amazon and Google providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner is anything but a way to keep people at their desks for more and more hours.
Ending the view that hours equals value would be a good step. This system puts caregivers, especially moms, at a distinct disadvantage, and also steals valuable time away from the 20-somethings out there that should be enjoying life to its fullest, before things like kids, mortgages, and/or throwing out your back while putting on a pair of jeans takes over.
There is another piece of “office culture” that is very connected to hours worked and also needs to go away: the secrecy around salaries and compensation.
The current system works really well for those making the rules, but pretty terribly for everyone else (especially if you are a woman or your skin color is darker than pale). The exact amounts of pay disparity for women and people of color are difficult to pinpoint, but there is general agreement on the fact that yes, women are paid less than men, and that people of color are paid less than their white counterparts. Compensation secrecy perpetuates this unconscionable reality.
The general approach recently has been for organizations to include salary ranges in job descriptions as well as to stop asking about salary history. These are reasonable steps but don’t really solve the problem since there is still a lot of information missing to the employees.
In our opinion, the best way to facilitate change is to provide full salary transparency. As of this month, Trendency has 100% salary disclosure for all employees and consulting contracts above $10,000 per year. For employees, the disclosure includes base salary, bonus, any benefits being provided that are not in the standard offering, and once we start getting into giving out shares in the company, that will be disclosed as well. No loopholes, no smoke and mirrors, just the data on everyone….including the executives of the company. We have also decided that this salary information will be shared with all prospective employees before taking the job. This ensures that any salary discussions will be done in full daylight and, as opposed to a salary range, it shows exactly why the salary was offered and how it compares to other employees.
The reason for this is simple: if employees don’t have any information about what people at their company are being paid, they have no idea if they are being undercompensated for their work. This lack of information puts employees at a complete disadvantage and ensures that pay disparities will continue.
Before we pull a muscle trying to pat ourselves on the back, we had some clear advantages on the timing. We are a small company that is just hitting its growth phase. Given our relatively early stages of life, this type of policy is much easier to put in place. We also are a group of people who are here because we believe in the product, and no one is here because of the money (yet). This is the perfect time to set these policies in place. There will be zero pay gaps here and everyone will know that for certain.
The day we were about to share the spreadsheet with everyone’s compensation it felt really strange. I mean really f-ing strange. Over two decades of working in a business culture where salaries are almost never discussed can really mess with your mind. Every once in a while there would be a slip of the tongue over a post-work drink, or a few rumors floating around, but this was very different. For me personally, there were a few hours of wondering what the reaction would be, would there be some angry phone calls? Someone feeling slighted? But in the end, it was much ado about nothing and quickly felt very cathartic.
If you want to talk about “office culture” let’s talk about respect and that starts with treating your team as an actual team. Our view is that all employees deserve to be treated like adults and should be trusted to make good decisions based on the best data possible. Gender bias and racism are not going away anytime soon, but if we start to pull the curtain away we remove some of the barriers that have been put in place to ensure that pay descrimination continues. And that is an actual office culture.
To anyone considering this approach, we highly recommend it. To anyone thinking they would never do it, I guess the question is: what are you hiding?
