Buffer.com is a social media company, that values transparency as one of the company's values. In line with this value, the company is planning to release to the general public the compensation information of its employees. Should the founders of Buffer.com push for public salary transparency among its employees?
Susanna Gallani, Tiffany Y. Chang, Brian J. Hall, Jee Eun Shin
Harvard Business Review (917019-PDF-ENG)
May 11, 2017
Case questions answered:
- Should Buffer.com founders push for public salary transparency?
a.) Are the values and culture fit so vital to the company that they can justify firing current employees/ask current employees to leave?
b.) If one of the “purposes” of implementing external salary transparency was to set Buffer’s pay structure as a benchmark for the other companies in the industry, what standards/benchmarks did Buffer refer to while creating their own pay structure?
c.) Buffer currently has an employee pool of 8, reduced from 12 earlier – a reduction of 33%. Will implementing an entirely transparent salary system not enable other companies in the industry to poach talent from an already lean Buffer, i.e., benefitting the other companies at Buffer’s expense?
d.) How viable is it to be transparent regarding critical company data and information internally as well as to the public for a small organization vis-a-vis a large company, one that has several levels of employee banding?
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Buffer.com Case Answers
Should Buffer.com founders push for public salary transparency?
a.) Are the values and culture fit so vital to the company that they can justify firing current employees/ask current employees to leave?
The company’s strong inclination to stick to its pre-conceived values (those perpetrated by the co-founders of Buffer.com) had led to many employees leaving/being fired from the organization.
Tom Moor, the third co-founder of Buffer.com, left because of differences regarding the work culture with Gascoigne and Widrich, as their idea of getting “early feedback on their ideas by sharing half-baked ideas on the web” did not sit well with Moor.
Gascoigne also fired three other people from the company as they did not seem to be fully aligned with the newly instituted company values.
Gascoigne suggested implementing external pay transparency. It was met with mixed feelings, unlike the idea of implementing internal pay transparency, which was received favorably by everybody. CHO Kopprasch went so far as to say (quite bluntly) that employees may choose to leave if they do not like the idea.
It is sufficiently clear from these incidents that Buffer.com feels more associated with a set of dictums rather than its employees.
b.) If one of the “purposes” of implementing external salary transparency was to set Buffer’s pay structure as a benchmark for the other companies in the industry, what standards/benchmarks did Buffer refer to while creating their own pay structure?
Buffer.com faced a lot of difficulties while coming up with a salary formula that wasn’t derived from hypothetical models but actually motivated employees to perform better.
At the same time, Buffer also wanted their pay structure to…
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