26 - When Employees Pass Around Salary Worksheets (Blizzard Entertainment)

In episode 26 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee discuss their favorite real estate apps, the hottest cities to move to if you're running from the pandemic/high cost of living/'the coasts", and a recent Bloomberg article that attempted a takedown vs Blizzard Entertainment related to pay issues - including some employees passing around a cloud spreadsheet listing salaries they make at Blizzard. Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)! SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 1:30 - Tim is gone (again) this week on another vacay! KD and Jlee talk about what they think Tim is doing on his Lake Michigan getaway. Ginger people don’t tan! 3:30 - What is your favorite real estate app? Jlee is a Redfin fan and the Dunn fam likes Zillow. 4:40 - First topic of the day - Redfin found that a record number of people are looking to move to a major metropolitan area. Tens of thousands of people are looking to leave the most expensive American housing markets and many are looking to move to Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Austin. 7:30 - Jlee doesn’t like your hate on the “coastal elites”! She’s surprised by some of the cities on the list and noticed the warm climates amongst the top 5 cities. She wants some Phoenix heat! KD wants to stay close to his roots in ATL. 12:00 - Next topic of the day - Blizzard Entertainment, famous for making many popular video games like Call of Duty, has a situation where employees circulated a salary document internally that showed major pay disparities. The salary document was first reported by Bloomberg - but the gang has questions. 15:00 - Jlee praises the person who circulated the Google sheets form for being efficient. If anyone has the link to the spreadsheet, HR Famous would love to see it! KD wonders aloud how many columns are on the spreadsheet? Are they names? The gang doubts it. 18:00 - An Activision spokesperson says that they compensate their employees fairly and gave their top performers a higher salary increase than in prior years. KD compares this issue to an episode of The Office where they have to decide who to give raises to and how. 21:00 - KD comments on the quote from the Activision spokesperson that says “a 20% increase on salaries compared to other years” was questionable language. KD and Jlee give high marks to this the language that is a little clever to the untrained eye. 25:00 - KD points out that Blizzard has thousands of employees and not everyone could be consulted for this article. He's kind of over articles that splash, but make no mention of how many employees a reporter talked to. 26:00 - What do you think Blizzard’s Glassdoor rating is? KD is a little surprised by Blizzard’s rating and thinks that their rating isn’t indicative of some of the problems this article addresses. 29:00 - KD finds the reported Blizzard salaries on Glassdoor by job and finds that many aren’t too far off the industry average/ KD guesses the problems are in customer service and QA based on low hourly rates. 32:00 - Jlee feels for Blizzard and their HR department in these tough times for their company. KD wants reporters to tell a full story and do their job right. He encourages them to take their clickbait titles for traffic, then tell whole story.