New job, 20% pay gap between me & colleague

[Doughbaglemon]

I recently started a new job that I thought I was quite enjoying but this has taken all the good feeling away...

Last week I discovered that a colleague who started the same date as me is earning 20% more than I am.

Our roles require us to be qualified and / or qualified by experience. I am fully qualified with 8 years post qualified experience AND 4 years in a senior management role doing a similar job.

My colleague is not yet qualified (work is paying for them to get qualified via study support) and they have come from a more junior role with no experience in this type of work.

I'm struggling to understand the pay gap. My husband says it's just tough luck, I was naive accepting the salary i was offered and I should have pushed for more.

However, it has really wound me up!

Although on paper our roles are the same, mine is more complex in that I have a team to manage (who are largely unrelated to what I do) and I have no assistant. My colleague has no line management but does have an assistant for support (they are not line managing the assistant).

The company is closely aligned to public sector and claims to have a fair and transparent pay policy but I wouldn't have known about this had someone not f*ked up!

(Note, i didn't go digging for this info, it was brought to me as payroll mistakes had been made)

I feel really taken advantage of and it has totally changed my feeling toward this job. I feel powerless as I'm still in my probationary period so can't bring it up.
The job is very different to the one I was sold but I was quite positive about making a go of it. Since this revelation, I just feel gutted.

Should I ask them to explain the salary decision making process? Should I wait until my probation is done? Should I suck it up and just work 20% fewer hours?? Should I just suck it up?

I don't have a union to get advice from so not sure what to do!

Any advice here??

Thanks x

Definitely ask the question, see what they say. Presumably you'll frame it as wanting to understand the difference with a hint of "I'm not happy and will walk if it's not sorted out".

I would take the information you’ve been given and speak to your manager about it, I’d also raise the fact that not only are you being paid significantly less they’ve also messed up massively by having made the mistake of sharing the info with you!

Is the colleague male or female?

We're both female

Just to add...the difference is £11k. If it was a few hundred and we could be considered on the same pay band, I wouldn't care.
But £11k puts my colleague 5 bands higher than me with no relevant experience or qualification which I just can't wrap my head around!

Definitely wait till your probation is up.

It sounds like your colleague may have negotiated her package much better than you did when she was offered the job. I’m often shocked at the number of people (unfortunately mostly women) who either don’t negotiate at all when offered a job or accept the very first offer.

You could try and renegotiate now, armed with the information you have but you will need to ask yourself if you’d be prepared to walk away if they refuse? You might be better chalking this down to bitter experience, never to be repeated and doing it either at the end of your probation period (assuming you have one) or at your yearly appraisal.

I would struggle to understand an £11k pay gap too.

It is all very odd that she is on so much more, and out of band. And has an assistant. Firstly are you sure your roles are actually equivalent? Also could there be something else going on you don’t know about ? Is other colleague known to the company already? Related to someone there?

Ultimately tho you may never know. The thing is to focus on your own negotiation and what puts you in the best position to ask.

A lot is going to depend on how well your probation is going and what your relationship is like with your manager

To an extent your husband is right. The pay discrepancy may be as simple as she negotiated and you didn’t.

If it is going well and you are getting positive feedback, I think you could politely raise - perhaps when you are getting closer to successful completion and they are keen to keep you - that you have uncovered a pay discrepancy. I would raise it in context that the role is different to what you were sold, and that you have both more responsibilities (line management) and less support (no assistant) than your colleague. You can suggest that if you had understood the nature of the role better you would have asked for a higher salary . If there are any other reasons why the role or work is more senior than perhaps it was sold as, all the better.

I would be cautious about making it all about the discrepancy. Your manager won’t discuss other people’s pay and negotiations with you. So keep it focused on your value to them.

They may well refuse to renegotiate. But IMO it doesn’t hurt to ask (politely).

on no account start working 20% less, get stroppy about it (however rightly aggrieved you feel) etc… If you are difficult they have no incentive to try to keep you.

Does your organisation have an equal pay policy?

If you are both female its largely tough luck unfortunately (although you could still raise it) Has she been there a lot longer?

Pay discrepancy is pretty common. It’s why I always negotiate a higher salary!

The banding point is off though - it makes no sense!

Thanks for replying.

We're definitely both doing the same job albeit for different sites (both northern sites). 3 posts were advertised, all doing the same job. A 3rd person was also recruited but he is London based so I'd expect him to be on more.

We all started at exactly the same time and she has no connections to the company. She only moved to the area 12 months ago.

I'm going to just keep plodding on and will see if an appropriate time to mention it comes up.
I know my negotiation is at fault but I'm more shocked that the company would see that as a reasonable gap between us, given the difference in experience and qualifications.

Really annoyingly, this week I've implemented some processes at my site to make what we do more efficient and I'm being asked to implement them for her site on her behalf.
Part of me wants to say no, for what she's being paid, she should be able to sort it herself. But the other part of me is a team player and wouldn't do that to someone!

No we started the same day!

They do have a policy - it claims to be about fairness and transparency.
But i found out by chance so not that transparent and certainly not fair!

No, don't just keep plodding on. Raise it and fight your corner. You deserve to be treated fairly.

Your colleagues salary has no bearing on your own. Ultimately you accepted a salary and as it turns out didn't do your research. That's your problem not your colleague.

Yes you can raise it but unless you've developed a new skill above that you were hired with then not sure you have a leg to stand on. If I were your manager or HR my concern would be that you'll keep pushing just because you hear someone else is on more.

Do you know for sure? As in seen her payslip? If not it might not be true

I wouldn't mention knowing her salary, but at your next review I would talk about the difference in the job to what you were offered, research the going rate and ask for an increase based on you excellent performance.

If they refuse I'd ask to see the banding for the 3 jobs and for a progression plan.