MILANO – Try to win a job, having a clear idea of what you will go to earn. In times of galloping inflation and stressed family budgets, this is not a trivial matter. But, if in the United States it is gradually gaining ground – even by force of law – this degree of transparency is still not seen in Italy. A technical factor: we have national contracts which already provide a reference grid. And cultural: two close friends, here, share many intimate details but struggle to discover the cards on their slip. But also tactical, on the part of companies. In a country with high unemployment, where – net of some sectors in which the rarity of talent is king – the hiring has the knife on the side of the handle, every strategem is good for reducing the cost of labour.
In the US: Pay in all ads
Colossus like Alphabet, Ibm o Wells Fargorecently told the Bloomberghave decided to publish the salary indication in all their job advertisements for the USA, not only where the law requires it: in the city of New York, for example, from the beginning of the month. And in Colorado. Not everyone has adapted to the Big Apple’s innovation: some realities have even turned off their dedicated ads. But the movement has started: Microsoft will do it from next year, Citi already declares salary ranges.
Calculate your salary right
In Italy: only one in ten
In Italy, the situation is still very different. If we start a job search on LinkedIn, we find in-depth descriptions of what is required of us and we will go and do. But not even the shadow of money. On Indeed, in the second quarter of 2022 only 10% of Italian post-employed workers had a salary indication. Level in line with Germany (10%) and Spain (13%), while France, Ireland and the Netherlands rise to one in three. In the UK it rises to one in two. This gap “cannot be traced back to a single reason. In Italy the issue of wages is very delicate, both for companies and for workers”, comments the Indeed economist, Pawel Adrijan, fresh from a summit in Milan “where I touched this problem first-hand: companies tend not to be transparent, either internally or externally”. There is a cultural reason but also an attempt to “pull the price”. Power “is unbalanced in the hands of companies, given the high level of unemployment in the country. So some prefer to keep the salary card hidden in the hiring process, thinking in this way to be able to keep them lower. However, it is often a false equivalence that lengthens the hiring process”. Thus the market loses in terms of “fairness and also efficiency: if you don’t know exactly how much you are going to earn, you will apply for a series of jobs with the risk of being disappointed by the pay compared to your expectations. Or you will discover that you are not enough qualified for a position that offers more than your true ambitions”. In short, a short circuit for the same headhunters.
Slightly better numbers, but in any case rather low, from the InfoJobs Observatory: “Considering the period January-October 2022, only 30% of the job offers on the platform contain the indication of the visible salary against 70% where the indication missing,” he explains Filippo Saini.
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Little transparency
Carlo Majerco-managing partner of the law firm Littler Italy, frame the question by recalling some structural differences between us and the States. “First of all, there are no obligations for our companies in this sense. While in the US there is strong pressure for transparency, linked above all to the elimination of wage gaps by gender or sexual orientation. Sensitivity is very high: on pay gap we see millionaire legal disputes starting”. Then there is a technical factor: while in Italy there is the institute of contractual minimums envisaged by the National Collective Labor Agreements, which are a reference grid especially for lower levels, in the USA the range of money offered for the same job is much wider. Without forgetting that “on the American market, highly mobile and with problems filling vacant posts, it is more frequent for the candidate to choose his employer than vice versa: knowing how much he will earn is essential”, adds Majer.
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Keep your hands free
Another difference at the basis of our delay, the company structure. “That big giants precisely indicate the remuneration packages offered is not surprising, given the level of sophistication with which they manage these aspects”, he reasons Pia Sgualdino, Head of Randstad Professionals, the division specialized in the search and selection of middle and senior management. “In our typical Pmi the approach of greater confidentiality regarding this information prevails. Then, surely, there are virtuous cases, especially in sectors such as tech where there is a greater degree of evolution of corporate structures”. More often, however, we hide behind phrases such as “salary commensurate with candidate’s experience” with the addition that “bonuses or benefits are foreseen”, recalls Sgualdino. A “keeping your hands free” on the part of those who hire to get to personally evaluate the candidates and decide, only after the vis-a-vis, whether it is worth forcing the budgets a little to secure that resource. On the other hand, American companies can get to know a lot more about potential employees than ours can (even call former employers and get them to tell you how much a person was earning).
The most open companies
However, the dissemination of accurate information is also becoming a success factor for the company transparent. “If those who hire have no obstacles to declaring their salary level, they place themselves on the market as an open and transparent organization: exactly what many candidates are looking for today”, says Sgualdino. “It conveys the idea that its pay levels are right, even to internal and existing staff.” Experts agree that it will be difficult to escape this trend, despite legal obligations to this they could be a stretch: the market will adapt. Also because more and more advertisements run online and it is a question of gaining visibility in the hunt for the right profile: “In cases where the salary is visible, the average number of applications for offers increases by 20% and moreover the views on the offer itself increase by + 11%”, calculates Saini. “Data that allow us to affirm the importance of information: the more elements companies are able to provide in their advertisements, the more interested and targeted candidates they will get.”