Word of Mouse
Once upon a time (about 15 years ago) individual employees had a hard time comparing their salaries to others. Information was gathered haphazardly, via word of mouth. Today a click of the mouse makes a wealth of data available to everyone. Employees are comparing their compensation to data from the BLS or Salary.com or occupation-specific Web sites. This ease of access means that managers must be able to explain (defend?) the salaries paid to employees compared to those a mouse click away. Whole foods confronted this issue via an "open book" list of last year's pay of all employees. Unfortunately, the quality of much salary data on the web is highly suspect. Few of the sites (except the BLS, of course) offer any information on how the data