Talking about compensation at a job (a.k.a. the total pay and benefits you get in exchange for your labor) can be excruciating. But why? It’s not because compensation designers are inherently evil, argues David Buckmaster, Nike’s Director of Global Retail Compensation. Rather, it’s because our system of pay is broken and neglected. When it comes to pay, Buckmaster believes the greater sin is inertia, not malevolence. That’s why he wrote a book—Fair Pay: How to Get a Raise, Close the Wage Gap, and Build Stronger Businesses—busting open compensation’s black box.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak to David about pay transparency, accessible data, exciting compensation experiments, and why the so-called labor shortage is really a wage shortage.

Read David's book, Fair Pay.

Learn more about David on LinkedIn, Instagram, or his website.

Mentioned references:

• Oculus (now Meta Quest)
• "Wonderwall"
• Bracken Bower Prize
• Pave
• Carta
• The Ready’s OS Canvas
• Widgets, by Rodd Wagner
• Maslow’s hierarchy
• Fight for $15 movement
• The Good Jobs Strategy, by Zeynep Ton
• The Good Jobs Institute at MIT
• "Katie Porter and Jamie Dimon congressional testimony"
• "PayPal net disposable income"
• Dan Price of Gravity Payments
• Buffer: BNW Ep. 6 with Joel Gascoigne
• "Norway transparent pay"
• Morning Star: BNW Ep. 54 with Doug Kirkpatrick
• ”Wells Fargo fraud”
• Range, by David Epstein

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