Open Salaries at Piscines Ideales

One thing I find interesting about the concept of open salaries is that, at first, people normally assume the concept is impossible, but when they consider it, they find it makes sense.

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At the Financial Times Best Workplaces Awards in Berlin in 2006 I met Stelios Stavrides from Piscines Ideales, a Greek swimming pool company, who had come in the top ten best workplaces in Europe. We were discussing transparency and he commented that everything in his company was open. ‘Except salaries, of course.’ I love to rise to a challenge like that and, as with most people, he found it hard to find a reason why they had to be secret.

At the same event two years later I met his son, who was also involved in running the business. I asked him if his father had mentioned anything about our conversation. ‘Oh, that came from you, did it?’ he responded. ‘Well, last year we published the salaries for our senior management. That went well, so this year we published them for all our staff. We haven’t looked back.’

In 2009 Piscines Ideales was rated the best workplace in Europe among small and medium-sized businesses. I can’t claim that moving to transparent salaries was the reason but it certainly doesn’t seem to have done any harm.

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Henry Stewart

Henry is founder and Chief Happiness Officer of Happy Ltd, originally set up as Happy Computers in 1987. Inspired by Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick, he has built a company which has won multiple awards for some of the best customer service in the country and being one of the UK’s best places to work.

Henry was listed in the Guru Radar of the Thinkers 50 list of the most influential management thinkers in the world. “He is one of the thinkers who we believe will shape the future of business,” explained list compiler Stuart Crainer.

His first book, Relax, was published in 2009. His second book, the Happy Manifesto, was published in 2013 and was short-listed for Business Book of the Year.

You can find Henry on LinkedIn and follow @happyhenry on Twitter.