Wage Transparency
Numerous states and some cities now require employers to disclose pay scales, salaries and wage information for existing and potential employees. The applicable jurisdictions continue to proliferate so many companies have simply decided to provide this information in every market. In my experience, the company established such broad salary ranges that the information wasn't particularly helpful, however it did require the company to address the compensation for those few individuals who, for whatever reason, fell below the minimum of the range.
Too much granularity of salary information can, of course, cause conflict with an organization but in general I think more transparency is better than less.
Very early in my career I was given responsibility for the annual budget process. This was before online budget software was available, so I created a very sophisticated (for that time) Excel model with VBA routines, etc. Each manager was given an excel file with the historical costs/revenues for their department and provided with instructions on how to complete the budget for each line item. In order to calculate the correct payroll taxes, etc. managers were instructed to enter the name, salary and bonus of each of their employees. This Excel sheet was then hidden and password protected.
You can probably guess the rest of story. This was before Excel had really strong password and encryption features, so I had a backdoor to the payroll sheet and when all the files were submitted, I could see every employee's salary and bonus.
Seeing which functions were paid the most was extremely motivating and ultimately guided the next decade of my career. I knew exactly what job I wanted and how much to negotiate for my compensation. Beth and I were willing to make the necessary sacrifices (including relocating 3 times) because it would be worth it.
Rather than bitching that I was paid too little, I was motivated to do what it took to get the better paying job. I wonder what would happen if companies were more transparent about their payroll.