Equal Pay

[HoundOfTheBasketballs]

I've accidentally found out that the other person in my organisation who does the same job as me is being paid significantly more than me.
I opened a document in a shared folder that shows her salary. It shouldn't have been available for me to view, but I was looking for something else and I saw it.
Our job title is the same and we do the same job day to day but on different projects. She does have some skills and experience that I don't, but I also have some skills and experience that she doesn't.
I don't really know how to approach this with my line manager. Does anyone have any suggestions? What I do know is I'm beginning to feel like my contribution doesn't have any value and it's really affecting my motivation.

Your organisation is not required to pay you and the other person equally. As long as the discrepancy is not due to discrimination over a protected characteristic they are fine. It may be that the other project is considered more important to the organisation than your or that the skills and experience she has are considered more valuable to the organisation than the skills and experience you have. It may be they think she performs better than you do. Or it could simply be that they had to pay more to get her on board than they had to pay you. It may even be that they regard your salary as the correct rate for the job and have red lined the other person's salary so that they won't get rises until you catch up.

Were you happy with your salary before you found out what this other woman was earning?

Hi bridge,

Thanks for replying. I thought this might be the case. I think she just negotiated her salary better than I did.
It's also the reason I haven't brought it up. I don't want to be told that she's better than me!
I guess I just need to give myself a kick up the arse and start working myself into a position where they feel I'm worthy of a pay rise.
Thanks again.

Don't be frightened of asking for a rise if you think you are worth it. Look at what other local employers (or further afield if it is a specialist role) are paying for similar roles. If that suggests you are underpaid you can use that as justification for your request.

Is your organisation in anyway geared up for GDPR. Don't they realise that an unprotected/unencrypted spreadsheet with salaries on it is a significant data breach under the new regulations.

They could find themselves with a big fine if they aren't careful, might be worth mentioning that, and stating that you have concerns as an employee that they are. To respecting data privacy and that's how you've now found out that a colleague's salary level is significantly more than yours even though you are doing the same job.

... that they aren't respecting...