Please don’t do me the favor...

I recently chatted with a woman, the first Black woman in a top executive position at a non-profit, whose been negotiating everything in sight since she heard my former partner, Lisa Gates, and I speak a dozen years ago. She had just negotiated one of the best compensation packages I’d ever come across in the non-profit world which of course made me happy and just a little bit proud. 

But the she told me something that pissed me off. And you know what Gloria Steinem said about that. 

"The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off."

She told me that some “woke” organizations were refusing to negotiate first compensation offers with employees because it will help close the wage gap since women and marginalized employees don’t negotiate.

YIKES!!

I’m sure you’re already thinking, wait a minute, that’s not true. We women have  been taking negotiation classes and hiring negotiation coaches and then happily negotiating compensation in greater and greater numbers since social scientists Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever wrote "Women Don’t Ask" more than a decade ago. And some of us have been negotiating all of our adult lives.

I negotiated my first job as an associate attorney back in 1980 and improved my opening offer by twenty percent simply by saying “but the other firm I’m interviewing with is offering 20% more of that.” And that was all it took. Nothing fancy. No negotiation skills or education. Just like that, 20% less seemed unfair under the circumstances. 

So what would have happened way back then had my new employer adopted a non-negotiable policy? Let me bullet point the lose-lose proposition this patriarchal attempt to stop women and marginalized minorities from negotiating their true market value which cannot be captured by any attempt to standardize compensation because we’re not dealing with widgets. 

We’re dealing with unique individuals with everything that implies for an employer seeking an employee who will drive revenue, save costs, inspire their workmates, and make the workplace more effective and efficient in general. To hire the gold standard - “highly engaged employees,” employers need to reach for the stars in terms of any prospective workers ambition, education, skill, passion, collegiality, professionalism, honesty, dependability, reliability, accountability, creativity and much much more.

Those employees know their value. They’ve researched competitive market compensation and know whether they should be receiving “average” pay or pay in the top 75 to 95%. You can’t hire them if they believe their value is $250K/year with 2% equity distributed over a five-year period (a one-year “cliff” followed by four-year distributions). You can’t hire them if they're used to receiving individual performance and company bonuses. 

So where does that leave employers? They will continue offering “average” or perhaps slightly higher than average pay based upon industry standards. Nor can they recruit the necessarily diverse workforce that improves bottom line profitability as surely as the sun rises in the morning and sets after dusk by treating every applicant as if they each had a known market value like a Birkin bag in a high end store. Shoot, even absolutely identical cars are subject to negotiation depending on factors like how long that Lexus has been on the selling floor and how desperate the dealership is to move it along.

That’s the employer’s side of the calculation? What about the employees? Let me start with the false assumption that women and marginalized minorities will be happier, more productive and enthusiastic workers if saved the opportunity to explain their unique value while dove-tailing the qualities they bring to the workplace to the specific challenges and opportunities faced by the employers.

First, the social science. It is established beyond peradventure that both parties to any negotiation are more satisfied with the outcome of any bargaining session when several offers and counter-offers are exchanged. More satisfied than if they get what they think they wanted in the first place. The employee is making $90K and asks for $100K. The employer says “yes” immediately. How do you feel? You feel buyer’s remorse because no one would so quickly agree unless they had more money to spend. Buyers’ remorse. The same goes for the employee immediately saying “yes” to $150K when the employee probably was likely ready to accept $125K or less. Seller’s remorse. 

Then there are after effects. Before the employer institutes their “no negotiation” policy, existing employees had all negotiated their compensation. And if they’re “highly engaged” employees who have stood the test of time, they’ve also negotiated raises, bonuses, equity and other perks. What happens when the existing staff discloses their compensation to the newbies? You got it. Resentment. Attrition. Or simply a far less motivated employee.

Let me also say this. Culturally, women are far more trained to accept the rules of the road as originally presented to them. Men, culturally (and of course this is statistical which can’t account for individual’s deviation from the norm) are far more likely to press pass beyond the stated boundary and negotiate compensation despite being told they can’t. This tendency accounts for some of the wage gaps in law firms that have “lock step” compensation plans, i.e., that pay “market” base salary as reflected by the National Law Journal every year. What that base salary doesn’t reflect is men’s more likely tendency to negotiate bonuses above and beyond the base and women’s less likely tendency not too.

Finally, there’s voice and choice. Autonomy and independence. Knowledge of one’s own value and the bare minimum courtesy of being allowed to express it. 

If an employer wishes to create a fair, dynamic, first-class workforce in which one stellar employee delivers far more value than five average ones, it must treat every individual as the unique worker than they are. Otherwise, the employer will be paying five “average” salaries to five “average” employees when he could replace all of them with what Silicon Valley once called the “10x engineer.” The person who could deliver the result that ten others never could. This doesn’t require math. Just elementary school arithmetic.

The solution?

There always has to be a solution.

Make negotiation standard in your company, along with pay transparency. The research shows that women and marginalized minorities negotiate every bit as often and as effective as the white guys if they are told that compensation is negotiable. So please, strike that note at the bottom of your job description saying that the compensation offered can’t be negotiated. You’ll be glad you did. 

Before we go, thank you to everyone who nominated themselves or someone they know for the Hundred Buck Hour grants we are distributing this year thanks to a generous donation from a client. If your name is randomly chosen, you will be receiving notification by email this week! More information coming soon on the Hundred Buck Hour grant for April.

Happy negotiating!