Does a pat on the back compensate for a slimmer paycheque? People have pondered over the question since the Roman days when the word salarium - paid to soldiers to guard the salt trade routes - came to mean salary. The expression "salt of the earth" has its roots, however, not in Roman but in Christian mythology.

Does it matter if your salt is flavoured, contains a pinch of herbs or is iodised? If you are having it with your tequila as a chaser, it does. It is a curious thing, but it just takes a couple of tequila shots to get people talking about money. On paper, your emoluments may be a matter for your boss and the HR department. But it is also a topic discussed over peanuts and pink gins. The fewer peanuts you get paid, the more the biting allusions during (un)Happy Hours.

What would happen if your salary and perks were left out on the clothesline for all the world to see? Opinion on the issue is changing. Earlier, such things were a big secret. Every employee made assumptions: the cuckoo in Cubicle C was definitely paid more than him; the loon in Cubicle L was not. How else could the former afford three-martini lunches every Sunday? And wasn't his wife's sister related to the boss? Envy battled truth. But there is always a reward for performance, even if it comes after ages.

Now comes a new survey by online salary, benefits and compensation information company PayScale. "How people perceive their pay matters more than what they're actually paid," says the survey. "Moreover, the more information they have about why they earn what they do, especially in relation to their peers, the less likely they are to quit." The point to note is that you shouldn't let your people think they are being taken for a ride. Pay them peanuts, but make it clear that everybody is getting peanuts. It works, especially at startups, where you are gambling on stock options and big bucks later.

"In principle, the work to be done as well as the skill-sets and experience of the person hired to do it should determine the compensation," says Amit Tandon, managing director at Institutional Investor Advisory Services India. "Gender, location, profitability of the organisation, the company's compensation policy and industry standards are considered to be the other important determinants. These factors, however, fail to explain the salary levels of executives in India."

In fact, that's true the world over. As revealed in the PayScale survey, the transparency movement is gaining steam. A 2015 Glassdoor report indicates that salary transparency is a growing trend fuelled by increasingly easy-to-access online information. A spokesperson for Glassdoor, a jobs and recruiting site, says that hidden pay information paves the way for unfair pay practices, and there's a surging tide calling for employers to come clean on who's making what.

The Glassdoor survey also revealed:

♦ 47 per cent of employers don't share salary information internally.

♦ 56 per cent of employees feel they have to switch companies to get a meaningful bump in pay

♦ Only 53 per cent of women and 65 per cent of men understand how pay is determined at their firms.

But don't head for 360 degree appraisals. That's a system in which your seniors, peers and subordinates all get to rate your performance. They teach gaming at the B-schools: how to beat the rating systems. Ethics and transparency be damned.