84. Pulling Back The Curtain on Pay with David Buckmaster | Brave New Work

Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans explore what fair pay actually looks like, and how complicated it is to get right.

#bravenewwork #theready #futureofwork #organizationaldesign #orgdesign #compensation #fairpay #paytransparency

Talking about compensation at a job (a.k.a. the total pay and benefits you get in exchange for your labor) can be excruciating. But why? It’s not because compensation designers are inherently evil, argues David Buckmaster, Nike’s Director of Global Retail Compensation. Rather, it’s because our system of pay is broken and neglected.

When it comes to pay, Buckmaster believes the greater sin is inertia, not malevolence. That’s why he wrote a book—Fair Pay: How to Get a Raise, Close the Wage Gap, and Build Stronger Businesses—busting open compensation’s black box; that’s also why we spoke to him about pay transparency, accessible data, exciting compensation experiments, and why the so-called labor shortage is really a wage shortage.

Get David’s book “Fair Pay”: https://www.davidbuckmasterbooks.com/...

Learn more about David:
–On LinkedIn:   / davidbuckmaster  
–On his website: https://www.davidbuckmasterbooks.com/
–On Instagram:   / d.buckmaster  

Mentioned references:
–Oculus (now Meta Quest): https://www.meta.com/quest/
–Wonderwall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderwall
–Bracken Bower Prize: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracken...
–Pave: https://www.pave.com/
–Carta: https://carta.com/equity-management/c...
–The Ready’s OS Canvas: https://www.theready.com/os-canvas
–Widgets (2015), by Rodd Wagner: https://a.co/d/6eaKu8A
–Maslow’s hierarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow'...
–Fight for $15 movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_f...
The Good Jobs Strategy - Zeynep Ton https://www.zeynepton.com/good-jobs-s...
The Good Jobs Institute - MIT: https://goodjobsinstitute.org/
–Katie Porter and Jamie Dimon congressional testimony:    • Congresswoman Katie Porter grills bil...  
PayPal net disposable income: https://time.com/6192213/paypal-danie...
–Dan Price of Gravity Payments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Price
–Buffer:    • 6. Defaulting to Transparency with Jo...  
–Norway transparent pay: https://rethinkq.adp.com/nordics-wage...
–Morning Star:    • 54. Rethinking Our Approach to Power ...  
–”Wells Fargo fraud”: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/well...
–Range (2019), by David Epstein: https://davidepstein.com/range/

00:00 Intro + Check In: If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would it be?
03:37 Misunderstandings about compensation practices
10:28 Why sites like Glassdoor or Payscale don’t show the full picture
18:57 Tradeoffs of centralized vs decentralized compensation
21:00 Sources of inertia in addressing pay issues
28:03 The three Cs of investing in your employees
31:17 Executives out of touch with front line worker payment
38:21 David’s take on transparent pay practices
41:37 David’s take on fixed pay by level
42:46 Location based pay for remote workers
48:17 Cost of labor vs cost of living
50:33 Self-set pay and team vs individual incentives
55:19 How the pandemic will affect front line pay
59:13 Wrap up: leave us a review and share the show with your friends

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Season 4 - Episode 28
This episode originally aired on September 7th 2021.