Some senior Netflix staff can no longer see how much their colleagues get paid, report says
- Netflix is restricting some senior staff from accessing their colleagues' salary details.
- Director-level employees had been able to view pay data for years, per The Wall Street Journal.
Netflix is no longer allowing some senior staff to view their co-workers' salaries following a rise in disagreements about pay, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Director-level employees — the rank below C-suite executives — had their access to colleagues' pay data revoked late last year, per the report citing unnamed sources. Such staff had been able to view this information for several years as Netflix generally offered a high level of transparency to workers.
The decision came as the number of directors at the company increased significantly in recent years, leading to more spats over compensation. Sources told the Journal that some executives felt they should be paid more because colleagues at the same level were paid more, even though their roles were different.
Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
The streaming giant has given staff access to corporate information such as strategy documents, but has been reviewing its high transparency culture, according to the Journal.
Netflix's co-CEO Reed Hastings wrote about this approach in his 2020 book "No Rules Rules": "For our employees, transparency has become the biggest symbol of how much we trust them to act responsibly."
He said that "increasing organizational transparency and eliminating company secrets" helped employees make better decisions.
Netflix started creating salary bands in early 2022 to create more consistent pay levels for people in similar roles as well as to help control costs, The Information reported.
Amid slowing growth, subscriber losses and decreasing revenue, Netflix laid off hundreds of staff last year, including 150 US-based workers in May, a further 300 employees in June and dozens of staffers at its new editorial site Tudum.