<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_blue.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Transition Network is a charity which supports the Transition movement, amplifies stories of community-led change, and nurtures collaborations across difference to challenge us all to reimagine and rebuild our world. In April 2018, Transition Network trustees and staff formally decided to adopt a non-hierarchical, shared governance model and thereafter a salary structure that was fit for purpose.
We spoke with Sarah McAdam, Julia Minnear and Peter Lefort, below are a few excerpts from our conversation. More about how Transition Network organises here.
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A live case study of Transition Network approach towards distributing pay in teams
Originally, Transition Network had a relatively flat structure with four pay bands, with an approximate ratio of 2:1 between the highest and lowest bands (gross), and had always taken care to manage this ratio.
They have been developing small experiments around decision making since 2013. They have been graudally implementing a new governance model, and had initially (and ambitiously) intended for their change in governance to coincide with a change in pay.
In April 2018, Transition Network changed their governance model to one that combines principles of sociocracy and holocracy, which they refer to as “shared governance”.
Everything took longer than anticipated, so they waited until the structural change had taken place before implementing a pay review (using the new governance model).
Early in the process they asked:
<aside> <img src="/icons/help-alternate_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/help-alternate_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> Would you favour a completely flat pay structure?
Yes - 0
No - 5
Don’t know - 7
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People broadly wanted pay differentials, but there was a range of opinions over what criteria on which to base these differentials. There were a lot of differing assumptions about what people needed, what other people needed, what was fair, what was unfair, etc.
An early proposal was made: there would be two separate pay bands, and people could self-identify the one they fitted into. It tried to play around with the idea that some people left work at the door, and for others that wasn’t the case.
The proposal was nothing like what Transition Network ended up with,
“but it brought out a depth of conversation and feedback that was incredibly useful. We suggested quite complex proposals and got really nuanced feedback about what they brought up for people and ended up coming round to a really simple proposal, which was the one we eventually put forward and accepted, but we couldn’t have done that without really testing the boundaries of the relationship between these ideas and shared governance.”
Transition Network ran a workshop about people’s relationships with money.
“[The workshop] manifested the real subjectivity in people’s relationships with money, and made it really clear to people that the way they experience money might be really different to somebody else in the team, helping us uncover and explore our underlying assumptions”
Based on a culture formed over years. “[I] wouldn’t have fancied starting with pay as a way to encourage openness."
Peter Lefort, Trustee, on talking about pay:
“I think it is one of the most difficult things to have a conversation about, but I don't imagine that ever changing, I think it kind of has to be because of what it is and what it represents. And how nuanced that is. But I think we have, since then, been able to have those difficult conversations when they've come up.”