Starbucks joins pay transparency movement

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This article was published 22/11/2023 (689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Check a Starbucks job posting — there’s a wage shown.

Starbucks Canada announced earlier this month it’ll disclose pay in its job advertisements. The ubiquitous coffee chain is among the latest companies to join a pay transparency movement.

British Columbia mandated pay transparency this November. Manitoba may, eventually, follow suit.

“We began this work last year,” Leanna Rizzi, communications manager for Starbucks Coffee Canada, stated in an email.

Pay awareness began internally. Moving to disclose wages in job advertisements should help people understand “how experience, capabilities and performance” can shape their compensation, Rizzi wrote.

It’s too soon to tell whether publishing wages has impacted the number of applications Starbucks receives, she added.

She pointed to an international Glassdoor survey: 70 per cent of the 8,254 respondents believed salary transparency is good for employee satisfaction. Roughly 1,000 of the respondents were Canadian.

“We know transparency in pay is important to employees in Canada,” Rizzi wrote.

Pay transparency is on Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino’s radar. While an Opposition member, she put forward a bill to mandate pay transparency in job postings; it didn’t succeed.

She now seeks to meet with stakeholders before creating any laws, she said.

“Sometimes when you have legislation, there’s unintended consequences, so it’s really, really important to get it right,” Marcelino said.

She’s wanting to tackle pay inequality affecting women and racialized groups, she added.

“What is at issue is how best to rectify this,” Marcelino said, noting it’ll “take some time” to meet with various groups on pay transparency and other potential measures.

She didn’t have a timeline for when such conversations would begin.

For now, Manitoba organizations decide whether to share salary expectations.

Sweet Impressions job postings come with a wage range.

“We choose a range rather than a flat wage as we believe that skills can be learned, but we should also fairly compensate those coming in with the skills that we would be willing to teach,” Alysha Cho, the bakery’s general manager, wrote in an email.

Main Street Project lists its salary expectations.

“Transparency is really important both internally and externally,” Cindy Titus, the non-profit’s communications manager, said in a statement.

Not disclosing salary can lead to “more negative assumptions” and a perceived lack of fairness, she wrote.

It can lead to true unfairness too, Titus continued — women, people of colour and other marginalized groups are disproportionately given lower wages for their work.

Pay transparency also shows staff what their salary could be if they climb the organization’s structural ladder, Titus maintained.

Canadian Footwear has never posted a wage in a job advertisement.

“If we post and all somebody’s looking for is how much they’re making, we may cut ourselves out of opportunity,” said Brian Scharfstein, Canadian Footwear’s owner.

Compensation extends beyond pay, he noted — there’s benefits and commission, among other perks.

“It’s more complicated than just posting a number out there,” he quipped. “I think just putting a number out there in a job posting doesn’t represent who we are and what we do.”

Not all sectors can pay the same, making it vastly harder for some to compete wage-wise, stated Loren Remillard, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

“Few things are more private than someone’s financial circumstances, their compensation,” he said.

Pay transparency may create discomfort among employees, and posting a wage in a job description doesn’t always come with context — for example, someone with higher education may be paid more for a job than someone without that education, Loren described.

Pay transparency has several perks, he continued: it could potentially address gender pay gaps, streamline hiring and negotiations, and build trust with businesses.

“Any move on this requires thoughtful examination,” Remillard said.

Human resource firm Robert Half has clocked an increase in businesses detailing wages in job descriptions. It’s also tracked Canadian workers’ frustration in not seeing salary expectations in a job posting.

Nearly half of respondents used in the firm’s 2024 Canada salary guide cited a lack of transparency about salary and benefits as their top frustration.

“They don’t want to waste their time,” said Sandra Lavoy, a regional director for Robert Half.

Cost of living increases have emphasized the importance of salary, she added.

“For lots of my friends, it definitely matters,” said Abby Wiens, 25.

Her close circle — made up largely of teachers — discuss their salaries so, in case it’s needed, they know what to ask for during job interviews.

Salary often determines where they move for work, she added.

“I think it’s important to talk about,” she said.

Employers do best if they review pay internally — and boost salaries where needed — before posting wages in job advertisements online, Lavoy noted.

Not doing so could cause “pay compression,” leading to anger, turnover and poor morale, she explained.

British Columbia employers must include an expected pay range in their publicly advertised job postings; the law came into force Nov. 1. Ontario introduced similar legislation in 2018. It has since been shelved.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com