Member Article

Equal pay improves employee performance by 29%

Employees work harder if they know that they are paid the same as colleagues for doing the same work. Scientists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, found that issuing all workers standardised contracts - where equal responsibilities are remunerated on an equal basis – directly increased performance levels.

Some employers have traditionally rejected standardised contracts, as salaries related to standardised contracts are on average 30% higher. However, the salary increase causes everyone to work harder – performance is typically 29% higher, leading to greater market efficiency.

Professor Matthias Sutter explained: “Due to the rapidly changing employment conditions in the public service sector, [university] lecturers and professors get different contracts with different salary and pension rights. Our data now suggests that this could have a negative impact on performance.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .