Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep153: MalaysiaPayGap banned. | The pros & cons of pay transparency pages.

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

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Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Have you ever wondered if you're currently underpaid at your job or you are at least paid fairly as compared to your peers, your team, your department and within your industry?

If you're a corporate professional, I am sure that your answer is yes. And today I actually want to talk about the two pay gap advocacy platforms, pay transparency advocacy platforms on Instagram that has pretty much disappeared overnight. And if you're listening in from Malaysia or Singapore, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. And that is the Instagram page of Malaysian Pay Gap, which is a pay advocate transparency movement that has about 197,000 Instagram followers that pretty much got banned and disappeared overnight, as well as the earlier official Singapore Pay Gap, also an Instagram page advocating for pay transparency in Singapore as well. I've talked

about these two platforms when in episode episode 109 when I taught you guys a bit more of an idea of how to do research for your salary, but in this specific episode, I want to talk about the pros and cons of researching your salary using these platforms online, for example, Glassdoor or Instagram pages such as Malaysian Pay Gap or Official Singapore Pay Gap or any other pay transparency social media pages that you see on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and everywhere else. And if you're new to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, hi, my name is Mei Ping. I'm a former corporate leader who has had multi-million dollar projects at international companies, currently turned career coach, helping corporate professionals to gain more clarity, confidence, and opportunities in the corporate world.

So if you're new here, welcome to the podcast where you can find all things corporate world and make sure that you sign up for my newsletter, The Career Confessions newsletter, where I send you daily inspiration, anything related to your career in the corporate world. So let's dive in. The first pro of researching your salary online, whether you go to Glassdoor, which is an international platform, or you go to the Instagram pages such as Malaysian PayGap or Office of Singapore PayGap, is the fact that you actually know roughly what other people are making in terms of the range, the job title, and so forth. So information is power and you should never be in a position to trust that the new company is going to pay you fairly. You also shouldn't directly trust that your boss

is always going to fight for the best salary or compensation for you for your job promotions or internal increments. So having an idea and going through these platforms, getting a good sense of like what roughly other people are making, fairly similar background with you or at least what you can see online, is kind of a good indicator to start that salary negotiation process, whether it's an external job offer or an internal job offer. So knowledge is power, and you should never go into a salary negotiation

having zero idea what exactly you're looking at and being unable to quote any specific sources that you have done your research on. For example, when I first graduated in 2008 and 2009, there were no such things such as, you know, all these like online pay advocacy or pay transparency platforms that I could really compare my salary to. So at the beginning of my career, and if you follow my career journey a bit more closely, I frequently talk about how I was afraid to negotiate. I didn't even know what number to refer to, right? So like, you know, how can I negotiate if I have no idea of

like what's going on? And even if I were to do that, probably I would not be successful as well. So that's really the biggest con. And I think it's a really, really great idea for all these platforms and resources are available for you to do your research and you should absolutely do that. Now, moving on to the second pro of why it is extremely helpful to research your salaries submitted to the platform and it's supposedly anonymous. So, it's real information by real people. Now, this is actually the absolute advantage of still having that extra step of doing your research on maybe Instagram or, you know, forums and so forth, compared to platforms such as Glassdoor, because if you go to glassdoor.com, you will see the title and you kind of get a range of, like, salary for the month or for the year, but it doesn't give you much context on what exactly is this person doing at the company, you know, what is the role

of the person. There's really not much description that you'll see that would, I guess, you know, justify the pay, you know, annually or monthly as well. I'm making sure that you get a bit of context that will give you a much better idea, a lot more confidence when you're going into a salary negotiation, whether it's an external job offer or internal job offer as well. So for more details on salary negotiation, it's actually something that I am running an upcoming workshop on. So we're going to dive into a little bit more detail there. While I truly, truly appreciate all this community effort that is being done to educate people out there, you know, Malaysians, Singaporeans, you know, via Malaysian PayGap or Official Singapore PayGap or any other pay transparency platforms out there, there are two cons and help educate you. And these are the

exact advice that I also share with my one-on-one clients and also something I talk about in more detail in the group mentoring sessions that I have for my program, The Copy Survivor. So let's talk about the two biggest cons that I want you to be fully aware of as you are looking at all these submissions and all these people who are supposedly making way more money than you online. The first big con is you lack 100% of the information because you do not actually know this person, okay? So this is a very, very important point that I want you to remember. So no matter what information that you see online, you can see, okay, you know, this person is making, I don't know, $100,000 a year or is making like, you know, $15,000 a month, roughly this sort of qualification, maybe some description of what this person is doing, but you should always remember that you do not actually know this person,

right? So, the problem with like submissions online, you know, via Instagram page or, you know, sharings on TikTok or, you know, sharings on forums such as like Reddit, or Quora, and so forth, is it really depends on the information that that particular person, what the original poster has decided to tell you, right? So, you're only seeing like, kind of like one side of the picture, but you may not necessarily see the other side of things. So, what, I can give you an example here. So, for example, let's talk about maybe an engineer. So let's say if you go to Glassdoor or you go to like all these like Instagram pages and you see that, hey, this engineer is making like $20,000 a month, kind of looking like this person doesn't really do much.

But you are lacking context because what makes the difference between, okay, why, you know, engineer A is making $20,000 and maybe why you, engineer B, is only making $15,000 could be, number one, maybe it is the size of the company, right? Maybe the person who makes more money is working in a global multinational company. They may have bigger budgets. That could be the case. You may be working in a much smaller company who doesn't really have that sort of like budget in terms of the company's growth or maybe the person making more money is a team leader who like manages a few people under that so usually people managers are paid a little bit more and maybe you are a solo contributor and therefore your space is a little bit lower than the first one there could be a third reason like for example maybe

the I guess the engineer who's like making more money could have had overseas experience or they have may have like subject matter expertise or some very specific niche or specific clientele that they target that allows them to add a little bit more value and therefore justifies the pay and you may be working on something that's a little bit more generic or something that there's probably more competition in terms of your skills and therefore the salary is a little bit lower so what I'm trying to say here is that there's probably more competition in terms of your skills, and therefore the salary is a little bit lower. So what I'm trying to say here is that there are multiple consideration points, there are multiple things that you kind of need to think about,

rather than just seeing, you know, someone else is making this much, and therefore I should also make this much. So it's the same with any occupation as well. So the example I gave you was for engineers, but it's the same with accountants also. So coming from my personal experience as an accountant, I can say that people who are working in a bigger company or maybe having like more responsibilities, maybe get paid a little bit more. And those people who are kind of doing things that are, like I said, a little bit more generic, a little bit more transactional, maybe don't get paid as much. So while both of these accountants may have the exact same job

title, or maybe these two engineers have the exact same job title, but it does not necessarily mean that the nature of the work is the same, doesn't mean that the responsibilities are the same, and also doesn't mean that the accountability is the same as well. So just, you know, I guess my biggest advice is kind of take things with a pinch of salt there's always context that you need to evaluate and kind of like take into account so this is something that I do in my one-on-one career consultation sessions or even in the group mentoring sessions as well because yes you can have a number that you have researched which is great I think that's like 50% of what you need to do but the other 50% is like okay how does it matter to you and kind of like what

you can learn from it and how you can kind of position yourself to eventually get there. Because what you may be missing, and unfortunately, these are things that a lot of people don't talk about, which is the real experience, the real skills that allow you to even negotiate for that high pay. So it's not just negotiation skills, which is obviously important, but that's not just it. So your understanding of the corporate world, how strong your communication skills are, how productive are you, how good are you in getting results, how visible are you, you know, are you someone who can really network and make friends? All these will eventually come into consideration when negotiating your salary and making sure you're not underpaid and making sure that you're at least paid fairly as well. Moving on to the second con that I also see a lot is when you look at, when you look online on all these like, you know, salary sharing platforms and if you happen to see a salary that seems to be a lot higher than what you're making right now, so it's very easy to

feel triggered, it's very easy to feel very frustrated, very stressed out, and that things are very unfair. And maybe to some people, it might trail down the point of depression as well. So all these are negative feelings. But what I want you to realize here is that protecting your mental health is very important. So if you know that looking through at all these, I guess the other people's salary sharing

is really making you feel bad about yourself, then don't look at them. But probably the better suggestion is really see it as an opportunity for you to reflect as to maybe there's something that you can do also. Because I always believe that if you focus on yourself, that's where, like, you know, the true growth happens. And if you consistently look at, like, someone else, eventually you feel bad about yourself. You know, your career journey is very long and I hope that you do not get beaten down just by a couple of posts or sharings on social media that you don't have enough context on and focusing on that and letting it beat you down versus focusing

on yourself because you can control yourself. You can reflect on your personality, your skills, and improve on your skills and learning the right strategies to eventually make yourself extremely valuable also. So all in all, I do think that having pay transparency advocacy platforms on multiple social media is actually a good thing, right? It's a community effort, it's a good thing, right? Sharing information, sharing knowledge, and sharing insights for corporate professionals like you to make sure that you are not underpaid.

However, I say that's only 50% of the equation. The other 50% of the equation is to make sure that you do not easily get triggered by it. You do not necessarily take a negative action because you are triggered. But instead, focus on what you can do and see all these success stories and see all these people who are making, I guess, more money than you as inspiration because guess what? If they can do it, 100% you can do it too. The only reason why you are not making that much right now, and I emphasize right now, is because you do not know how. You may not have the right career strategy, you may not have a good understanding of the corporate world, or you may not necessarily have the skill set that make you very valuable.

So therefore, what you're lacking is actually the skills and positioning, which the good news is that you can learn all of these. So the next time you are researching your salary, I hope that you keep what I say in today's episode in mind, and I think this will help you to go a much longer way to enjoy a much smoother career journey. Okay, if you learned something from today's episode, drop me a message on LinkedIn or Instagram and let me know. And if you're a corporate professional who really cares about your career and you want to receive daily dose of inspiration delivered right to your email box,

make sure that you subscribe for free to my Career Confessions newsletter, where I share new insights, new learnings, and new realizations that you can definitely apply to your career right to your inbox. You can find the link to subscribe for free in the description box below. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, and if you think that it can just help one person, make sure that you share this episode with him or her on social media. And I hope that all these episodes that I make for the Corporate Survivor Podcast can really help someone to better survive and thrive in their corporate career. So till then, I'll see you soon. Bye!