The ninety-minute session that finally got our managers comfortable talking about pay

From memory: why am I at the bottom of my range after six years; the advert for my job shows more than I earn; my colleague told me what she earns and it is more; what do I have to do to get to the midpoint; why did I get the same increase as someone who does less; and can I see the range for the grade above. The second and third account for most real conversations since ranges went on adverts.

We do something similar but I disagree with groups of twelve. In a room of peers our managers performed confidence and saved their real worries for the corridor. We moved to groups of four with one HR partner and the practice became honest. It triples the number of sessions, which is the trade-off.

The escalation part deserves more than fifteen minutes in my experience. Our managers were making commitments in the moment, things like I will get that fixed for you, which then became grievances when the fix did not appear. We now teach one sentence: I do not know, I will find out, and I will come back to you by a named date.

Did you measure anything afterwards? We ran a similar programme for 300 managers at a housing association and the only number that moved was the employee survey item on understanding how pay is decided, up from 41% to 58% favourable. I was pleased, but our executive wanted something harder.