Within the workplace, there is a plethora of subjects we're more than willing to discuss freely and frankly with our peers. 

However, what we each earn is never one of them. Yet transparency about what our colleagues are paid can actually boost productivity. Not only that, but greater salary disclosure may serve to help bridge the gender pay gap. 

Money, particularly personal salaries, sits firmly in the camp of unmentionable discussion topics - especially if non-disclosure is written into your employment contract. 

Peculiarly, we'd rather talk about sex, drug use, and other such intimate and forbidden topics before we venture into the taboo subject of money. 

Talking about one's personal wealth and pay cheques is widely regarded as crass across many different cultures. 

Global polls show that an overwhelming majority of the total surveyed responded that they were 'never comfortable' with discussing earnings with colleagues. 

There are some things that are just - private, but perhaps we should be encouraging salary transparency and more open discussion about personal pay. 

We already voice many of our ambitions, achievements, and even failures in quantifiable terms - such as weight loss, test scores or running times. So it seems bizarre that there is such a cultural phobia around discussing our salaries, when they are simply a quantifiable measure of our career success. 

Greater salary openness may even help expose violations of equal pay laws and encourage employers to align pay more fairly between genders, particularly in situations where men and women hold positions of equal or similar status. 

While the gap between men's and women's salaries in New Zealand have been in slow but steady decline over the past two decades, there is the argument that women of equal merit are still paid less than their male counterparts. 

This indicates that there is certainly scope for reducing this gap further, if not eliminating any pay discrepancies altogether. 

Ensuring a more equitable labour market can have a positive impact upon productivity and growth. Several studies have pointed out a strong correlation between greater gender equality and increased firm profitability. 

According to a 2007 study conducted by consulting firm McKinsey and Company, European firms with high proportions of women in power saw stock values climb by a phenomenal 64 per cent over 2 years. 
  
And Fortune 500 firms that most aggressively promote women recorded, as a percentage of revenue, profits 34 per cent higher than their industry medians. 

An article published late last week by The Atlantic also suggests that pay disclosure could be a win-win for both employees and employers. 

Eliminating the norms of salary secrecy may not only reduce salary discrimination, but may also be a key factor in drastically improving the efficiency and productivity of employees. 

These arguments for mandatory disclosure are based on recent research by Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, an economics doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Huet-Vaughn conducted an experimental study and found that those exposed to information about the earnings of their peers were ten percent more productive on average than those with no information about their colleague's salaries. 

An even more interesting finding from the research was the fact that women were productive regardless of whether they were exposed to pay and rank transparency. 

Men on the other hand were more information-sensitive; those who learned about the status and salary of their peers were more productive. 

So it doesn't appear that pay transparency boosts women's productivity, but making it clear how much women and men are paid in an organisation might encourage employers into aligning pay more equally for positions with the same responsibilities. 

There are many firms across the globe and across innumerable industries that have adopted policies of publicly disclosing salary information. 

As Huet-Vaughn finds, the taxable income of employees - from Fortune 500 companies, to software developers, to state governments - is almost immediately available to anyone with internet access. 

The case for mandatory pay transparency is not a slam-dunk. After all, privacy matters, so salary disclosure depends on the industry, the size of the organisation, and a number of other factors. 

But, if a firm can see the economic benefits in improved productivity, salary disclosure could be worth considering.

Source: How much do you get paid?