Why companies don't always pay fairly

One reason: "Fair" is in the eye of the beholder, but the only stable situation is defined by the marketplace, which doesn't care at all about fairness

Dear Bob ...

I've noticed over the years in a number of companies that the pay may not be "fair."

Employees with much higher pay don't necessarily have more expertise and contribute more than those paid much less. Why aren't some companies trying to be equitable, which is actually in the company's own interest?

[ Bob Lewis tackles another aspect of workplace justice in his Advice Line post "Is it fair that new graduates don't get hired?" | Get sage IT career advice from Bob Lewis' Advice Line newsletter. ]

Second question: Should the lower paid but more valuable employees discuss this with their bosses as a self-preservation technique in this time of widespread layoffs? I guess your answer would be yes. If so, then what's the best way to do it?

-Trying to survive

"Fair" isn't always as easy to define -- or design -- as you might think.

If you've read my various Keep the Joint Running articles on the subject ("Poor Joe," 10/22/2007, and "Comp logic," 10/29/2007), you'll know the argument: The only stable approach to compensation is to base it on the labor market and what each employee can negotiate there.

That isn't always fair in the eyes of employees, who tend to look at such matters from the perspective of the value they deliver and not what the labor marketplace will pay them.

Nonetheless, it's how it has to work because basing compensation on value is a sucker bet: If you make it and your employer agrees to it, you're begging your manager to go shopping so as to obtain the same value for less.

Sure, sometimes it all misfires and less valuable employees receive more compensation. It's unfair of course. And in spite of that, sometimes the less valuable employee is, in the labor marketplace, more apparently valuable because (for example) five years of experience looks like more value than two years of experience.

And that isn't even starting to take intangibles into account. For example, of two developers, one might be far more productive in terms of quantity and quality of code, but the other is more presentable: able to meet with executives, schmooze, persuade business managers of the necessity of difficult choices, and so on. It might not be part of the official position description, but it still matters and may be part of a future position description.

The final issue is, of course, that evaluating employee performance is far from an exact science.