In this series, business correspondent Timothy Goh offers practical answers to candid questions on navigating workplace challenges and getting ahead in your career. Get more tips by signing up to The Straits Times’ Headstart newsletter.
Q: Does sharing my salary anonymously online or with colleagues promote pay transparency or create unnecessary risks?
Posting your salary anonymously on online forums is generally okay as a personal choice, provided no confidential company information is disclosed.
But anonymous figures often lack context, making them of limited value and sometimes leading to unrealistic expectations, said David Leong, managing director of PeopleWorldwide Consulting.
“Salary-sharing platforms can improve market awareness, but users should treat the information cautiously… Employees should also be mindful of their employment contracts,” he said.
“While discussing one’s own salary is generally not unlawful, disclosing confidential remuneration information relating to others or proprietary company data may raise contractual or workplace issues. Don’t get into unnecessary issues with such disclosures.”
Leong noted that salary is one of the most sensitive topics in the workplace because compensation is rarely determined by a single factor.
Two employees with similar job titles may have very different pay due to experience, performance, specialised skills, market scarcity, business impact or legacy employment terms.
In that sense, salaries should remain private, even among work colleagues.
“What begins as a confidential discussion can quickly turn into workplace gossip, with comments taken out of context and amplified through the rumour mill,” Leong cautioned.
“The biggest risk is not discussing salary itself, but how the information spreads. Once conversations are repeated second-hand, they can become distorted, leading to misunderstandings and unnecessary workplace tension.
“In many workplaces, information leaks through informal conversations, and by the time it reaches others, the original message may have changed completely, creating resentment and comparisons that were never intended,” he added.
Leong said fairness in the workplace is achieved not by everyone earning the same salary, but by ensuring differences in pay can be “objectively explained, consistently applied and aligned with market realities”.
Maddy Goh, executive search partner at Inicio Group, said online salary discussions can serve as a “reference point”, but not a “verdict”, as a salary figure on its own reveals little about the scope of a role, its responsibilities, or why that package was offered in the first place.
She added that companies discourage employees from discussing their salaries openly because, where pay disparities cannot be clearly explained, employees will naturally question whether the system is fair.
“Pay transparency can improve fairness only when organisations have clear salary frameworks and managers who are prepared to explain how pay decisions are made… When employees understand the reasons behind pay decisions, conversations become far more constructive,” she said.
