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Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | |
REMUNERATION
Where’s the money?
So far, pay transparency in job listings is less transparent than you might think
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OVER THE LAST couple years, pay transparency laws have started to gain a toehold in Canadian labour markets, with laws of various types requiring employers to list the salary of a job taking effect in P.E.I., B.C., Manitoba and. soon, Ontario, where a bill has received royal assent, but hasn’t yet come into force yet.
It’s a new reality for businesses and job-seekers ― so are Canadian businesses responding with complete and total transparency, throwing open the proverbial doors on their pay scales?
Well…sort of. According to Indeed’s senior economist Brendon Bernard, many companies are still trying to hold their cards close to the vest, and many more are posting salary ranges than are posting actual salaries.
“Employers might be more wary of posting pay in annual, rather than hourly terms, as the latter still provides some flexibility in determining overall labour costs,” reads an Indeed report. A Mercer report found that Canadian companies are still slow to get on board, with only 28 per cent of businesses openly communicating pay ranges, and the majority of those posting vague salary ranges.
There are some who would like to encourage Canadian businesses to open up a little bit more ― not least of which because postings to candidate networks like Glassdoor mean that job-seekers often know what a company pays, even if they won’t say it.
“I think there is a business case for pay transparency,” says Mercer’s Have You Heard? podcast host Emily Ferreira. “If employees are gaining this information elsewhere, you should at least try to control that narrative, and confirm that information that they’re seeing online or elsewhere is correct.”
The other argument for greater transparency ― one that’s more applicable in tighter labour markets ― is that it’s a recruitment incentive. “Job postings that included wage estimates received more applications per day, and were active for shorter periods of time, than comparable postings that didn’t mention pay,” reads a HiringLab report. One company president, Lisa Pasquin, told The Globe and Mail that when her company posted salaries, “I got a dozen unsolicited job applications that day.”
“We know that [finances] is a top two concern for employees across all demographics, and salary information is really important in terms of making robust decisions,” said Mercer partner Christie Rall. “It is about building trust with people you want to bring into the organization, people you want to stay in the organization, because we know that transparency drives both recruitment and retention, and it’s a really critical part of the relationship between employer and employee.”
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WORKFORCE
The world according to MrBeast
A leaked memo from the world’s most successful YouTuber spills secret sauce on the Gen Z workforce
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TO SAY THAT YouTuber MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) is famous with gen Z is significantly underselling it. MrBeast is famous with Gen Z on the level of someone like Oprah, the President of the United States or Beyoncé for older generations.
Statistically the world’s most successful YouTube content producer, MrBeast nets around $54 million a year with videos titles such as I Spent 5 hours Buried Alive and Ages 1-100 Fight for $500,000. In addition, he is the founder of offshoot companies like MrBeast Burger, Feastables and Lunchly.
He also now employs around 250 people in his YouTube empire, and last month an onboarding doc for those employees leaked on the web ― and it’s garnering a huge range of reactions. Some are calling it “the definitive guide to running a Gen Z workplace,” while other summarize it as the “insane drivel of a sweatshop boss.” (The whole thing is worth a read: as Tom Alder, writer of the Strategy Breakdowns newsletter noted, “leaked internal memos are religious texts for the tech world.”)
For Gen Z readers, the memo seemed to strike a chord. “The document shows a remarkable dedication to efficiency that I think most of us crave at this point,” wrote content creator Kyla Scanlon. “He’s a risk taker; he understands bottlenecks, and he prioritizes communication ― it’s good stuff, but like, scary. The good is that MrBeast really is a fantastic operator that seems allergic to bureaucracy.” (A sample: “I want you to have a mindset that God himself couldn’t stop you from making this video on time,” the document reads. “Check. In. Daily. Leave. No. Room. For. Error.”)
“It feels authentic,” added tech investor Marc Cohen. “It feels like it’s written by a person rather than written by a corporation. When you do that, you get a message across.”
“He’s not selling employees on a list of benefits they will enjoy, like hybrid work and flexible schedules and unlimited PTO while outlining how to play nice with other departments,” said brand expert Rachel Mattox. “Quite the opposite. He’s saying if you’re not single-mindedly obsessed and okay with unapologetic micromanaging and radical accountability, quit now.”
Still, as an artifact, it’s a fascinating document. “This is the first manifesto we have ever gotten from a Gen Z leader,” Scanlon noted. “The doc was also focused on immediate technology-driven results, a blend of work and personal interests and unprecedented transparency. That’s how Gen Z will work. And it’s all in that document.”
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LEADERSHIP
On the wane
Is the drive for diversifying Canadian boards losing momentum?
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A N EW STUDY suggests that diversity on the boards of Canada’s largest public companies is “losing momentum,” with the smallest growth in the representation of women on boards in nearly a decade, according to the latest diversity report from business law firm Osler.
Women directors are no longer a rarity, and token female representation on the board is now the exception, with the average number of women on a board among TSX-listed companies having increased from less than one woman per board to 2.37 women per board over the last ten years, the Osler 2024 Diversity Disclosure Practices report reads.
However, it goes on to note: “We saw a marked decline in the rate at which women are being added to boards compared to recent years,” and “no less concerning, compared to last year there has been almost no change in the proportion of visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and persons with a disability on [Canadian] boards.”
It’s hard to say exactly what is driving this loss of momentum; it could be that as the gender diversity rate approaches 30 per cent of board seats held by women (often talked about as a target number), that progress is slowing. It could also be that the increased diversity in other categories reflects a shift in overall diversity focus.
Looking forward, Osler seemed to find it hard to know what to predict in terms of diversity rates in the years to come. On the one hand, they said they don’t see the same antagonism towards diversity initiatives in Canada as is seen in the United States. “At the same time, however,” they cautioned, “some of the historic external driving forces for further change are becoming less effective.” Companies that have achieved 30 per cent diversity aren’t pushing themselves further, and there is ongoing squabbling among the Canadian Securities Administrators about diversity disclosure rules, the firm said.
Still, despite the slowdown in progress, some are still optimistic that corporate Canada is headed in the right direction, even if diversity isn’t the buzzword it was a few years ago.
“I’m hoping that the Canadian companies will continue with their goal of gender parity and do what is right,” said Wendy Kai, board chair of Ontario Power Generation. “I do think that companies will be less vocal about their achievements, where in the past, I would say, we used to celebrate our accomplishments much more. So, I’m hoping we still continue with parity, but I do think you will not see us celebrate it as much.”
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HIRING
Ack! North Korean fake employees are everywhere!
Employers are being warned to beef up security of their recruitment processes to avoid becoming victims of fake employee hiring schemes
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LOOK, IT HAPPENS to everyone. You hire a new employee, complete the onboarding process, their first day is coming up and ―ah, rats, it’s just a fake North Korean hacker posing as an employee again…
Earlier this year, an IT firm called KnowBe4 said that they got caught out by such a scam. “We posted the job, received resumes, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware,” the company said. “They are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs.”
According to the company, following an investigation they now believe there are thousands of companies that have hired fake North Korean employees. “The North Korean fake employee problem is a complex, industrial-scaled nation state operation, and it is likely that thousands of organizations around the world have or are now involved in accidentally hiring North Korean fake employees.”
They might indeed have stumbled onto something, although it appears crime-busting organizations like the FBI are also on the case. In June, Wired reported that three companies in Wyoming were linked to a North Korean fake employee scam to raise money for WMDs. And last week, Google’s Mandiant unit released a report claiming that “several major U.S. companies” had come to them after discovering that they, too, had hired fake North Korean employees.
Why now, though? Experts say that it may relate to the AI boom of the last few years ― many companies are rushing into the space, and in a scramble for talent security lapses mean North Korean state hackers can get in.
It sounds far-fetched, of course – that’s the point. “There definitely are organizations that don’t take this seriously, but it is such a difficult problem that even the ones that do take it seriously are still being successfully hacked,” said the U.S. Defense department’s Gregory Allen, who told Axios that the problem is particularly acute among venture-backed companies looking to quickly launch their products.
In the end, it was embarrassing, but KnowBe4 caught the scam before it did any damage. Others have not been so lucky. “Do we have egg on our face? Yes,” wrote KnowBe4 CEO Stu Sjouwerman. “And I am sharing that lesson with you.”
Signing off from Pyongyang…
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