Intranet managers pay

Loads of money

Are you worth what you get paid?

As part of our drive to become more “transparent” to the licence fee payers, the BBC announced a while ago that it would be regularly publishing the salary bands of it’s highest earners. The BBC board’s salaries have always been available in the annual report, but the BBC took the unusual step of announcing the salaries earned by the next management level down and this information has already been made public. Apparently it’s raised a few eyebrows internally; probably understandably.

Later in September, the BBC will announce the next highest 100 earners within the organisation. This is in addition to the publication of expenses claimed by senior BBC managers as a result of requests made from the public as provided by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

At last weeks Edinburgh TV Festival, questions were asked about “talent” pay and calls made for the BBC to disclose what it pays its high profile performers. The actor and comedian, Alan Davies, has already been subjected to a 25% pay cut for his role as Jonathan Creek; http://tinyurl.com/mvr48v

Director of BBC Vision, Jana Bennett, stated in Edinburgh “The BBC is in a market; in the broader sense it’s part of the creative industries. It performs a fundamentally different role than that performed by, for example, policemen or teachers. It is a category error to suggest that the public would actually be able to contribute to working out what we do about it. It’s like me talking about Tom Cruise’s movie deals. I’m not of that sector.” http://tinyurl.com/knvxe3

So as we become more open regarding our top earners’ salaries, would you be happy to have your salary become common knowledge within the intranet industry? Would it affect our salaries if companies benchmarked their intranet people positions with other organisations?

I would imagine that our HR departments already do some form of pay benchmarking exercise as part of their role in setting job descriptions commensurate with pay scales, but I’ve seen little evidence of a consistent and common approach.  As intranet managers tend to sit in different departments within differing organisations, this doesn’t appear to be an exact science. There’s also the complication of aligning salaries internally within the appropriate existing pay bands.

Would the publication of our collective pay help the intranet business overall or are we all too secretive about what we earn?

Views?

You can also choose to respond to the poll below. The results are just for fun obviously.

How will the role of the intranet manager evolve?

I’m in the process of completing a survey of our intranet practices, for a well known consultant in the intranet industry. One of the questions was “How do you see the role of the intranet manager evolve over the next 3 to 4 years?” and it got me thinking.

The role of the intranet manager going forward will be determined by the vision of the senior managers within the part of the business who own it. If they’re brave enough to acknowledge the importance of the role and how a fully supported team of people can make significant efficiencies within the buisness, then the intranet manager will thrive.

Alas many organisations are extremely short sighted in their approaches and the intranet only becomes important when its actually not available.  This in itself, indicates how important intranets are, and therefore how crucial an intranet managers role is.

But it is also upto to us to help ourselves. We need to be ambassadors for change, and challenge the way things are done in our businesses, as well as demonstrating our understanding of what the business wants from its intranet. I see far too many intranet managers who don’t understand the needs of their business. This is a self defeating approach.

We need to get out there and regularly be seen to clearly support what the organisation is trying to deliver, and what we can do to help it achieve its objectives.

Hide in your ivory towers at your peril.