Consultant: A Fair Salary Does Not Mean an Equal Salary

A fair salary does not mean paying everyone the same. This is the argument made by Dace Tauriņa, senior consultant at the consulting firm Figure Baltic Advisory, in an opinion piece on the Latvian news portal Delfi. She explains that two employees with similar job titles can legitimately earn different amounts, while two seemingly different roles can be equivalent in pay. The piece is the author's opinion and may not match the editorial position of Delfi.

The average wage tells employers little

According to Tauriņa, the national average wage covers a very wide range of professions, levels of responsibility and sectors, so it is of limited use to a company as a benchmark. Organisations therefore build pay systems in which positions are compared with one another: the more valuable the role, the higher the pay. In her view, the argument that "the market pays this much on average" can cause more confusion than clarity when given without context.

Rare skills may cost more

The author notes that a higher salary does not always mean a harder job. Pay is also shaped by supply and demand for particular competences. She gives examples including certain types of IT developers, cybersecurity experts, highly qualified engineers, and also electricians, plumbers and equipment technicians. It can be rational for a company to pay more if it cannot develop a product or maintain a critical function without such a specialist. This does not mean that the person is more valuable than others as a human being.

The role first, the person second

One of the most common mistakes, Tauriņa says, is setting pay mainly by job title, since two project managers or programmers may do substantially different work. In a professional system the position is first evaluated against common criteria, and only then is the individual's pay placed within the salary range, taking into account experience, competences and performance. This helps avoid differences that arose historically.

The author stresses that an employer must be able to explain why a role sits at a given level and why salaries differ. Transparency does not mean everyone must know colleagues' pay, but that the logic of the system is understood. She suggests asking not whether everyone receives the same, but whether every significant difference can be justified.