Salary Surveys: That Time of Year... to Get Into Trouble
This is the time of year that HR professionals pick up the pace of conducting salary surveys in their planning process for the new year. What many don't know is that anti-trust issues threaten to bite back at the unsuspecting. I recent;y tweeted about a legal settlement that occurred among major software developers that prohibited them from "agreeing" not to poach each others ranks for employees. Apparently, it was believed that this tacit agreement amounted to a potential violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
In the compensation area it is well established that agreements to set and fix wages can also be found to violate the Sherman Act. How can one be accused of this? Easy. All you have to do is conduct your own survey, share specific salary information with firms in your closely knit industry or geographic area, mix in a few other actions which appear lest than objective and, viola, you have the recipe for disaster.
So, when conducting your salary surveys this year, hear a a few tips on how not to get into trouble:
- Have a third party conduct the survey so that you are not accused of “price fixing” wages
- Avoid the appearance of collusion by not conducting your surveys at the same time every year.
- Exchange data, not commentary on your practices. It will be hard to show that those discussions were necessarily without the intent to collude.
- Never, ever trade information on FUTURE pay rate.
- Make sure the date is aggregated so that you are not able to identify an individual participant in the survey.