One of our core Values is Default to Transparency. As such, salaries are transparent within the company. There are some specific reasons that salaries are an especially powerful item to lean into complete transparency with as a company.
Compensation is a very important and sensitive element of work. Compensation is directly connected with life overall, in terms of supporting peoples’ livelihoods. It is also intertwined with fairness and equity, as the choices a company makes around compensation will be a key component of how they value people, and whether there are differences in how they treat people. We believe that it is vital that team members have full information around how and why we make the decisions we do around compensation. Having full context and awareness on how salaries are determined, and the differences across roles and levels, leads to predictability and reliability.
We have chosen to create a system where conversations around compensation can happen in the open, where we can be involved when there are concerns that we are not arriving at the appropriate salaries for a given role.
All of this leads to greater trust. Our belief is that transparency breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of great teamwork.
When it comes to fairness and equity, transparency is a powerful tool. With transparency, any kind of favoritism is surfaced and visible. Transparency serves us in our goal of Limiting opportunities for discrepancies and exceptions, and the result is that we are able to maintain a system with integrity and aligned with our Compensation Principles, especially Fairness.
The full details of our Salary System methodology are transparent. All individual salaries are transparent, as is the Market Data we use and the way it is utilized to arrive at benchmarks across roles (Buffer Benchmarks).
Salaries and our methodology have also been transparent publicly since 2013. Leaning fully into external transparency in this way holds us to an even higher standard, as we open ourselves up to public scrutiny on our approach to salaries.
External transparency enables prospective candidates of Buffer to deeply understand our unique Salary System, and through this, see how we live our Values. This means that people can enter our hiring process aware of details such as How Salary Negotiation works at Buffer. External transparency builds trust with our audience and strengthens the Buffer brand.
External Transparency is also a way for us to drive change across the industry towards greater justice in compensation. We fundamentally believe that transparency can shine a light on inequity and play an important role in pushing companies to be a force for good in the world.
We serve entrepreneurs and small businesses, who often lack time, knowledge or resources to do something to the high standard they might strive for. When it comes to compensation, sharing the entirety of our salary methodology can provide an invaluable resource to speed up the implementation of solid practices for these businesses.
We understand that sharing salary externally may not be comfortable for some people, and in some cases may even be a safety issue. We have found from experience that in most cases, the discomfort comes from the fact that compensation is a taboo topic in many cultures, and from unverified fears rather than true concerns. Given this fact alongside the immense benefits highlighted above of external transparency, we default to external transparency for all individual salaries, which are available to view at buffer.com/salaries. We strive to find people who are comfortable and energized to have their salary transparent and contribute to our goals. In cases of a genuine safety concern, after a discussion to enhance our understanding, we can obscure the external transparency of an individual salary.