Website breaks salary taboo by revealing what employees earn

But one website has set out to break it.  Glassdoor.com, which is already a huge success in the U.S., today announced plans to open up here.

The site allows anyone to log on and discover what leading companies pay, and whether employees think they are a good place to work. 

Glassdoor.com lets employees find out how much their colleagues are earning

There is a catch, however  -  to get the information, users must first reveal how much they earn.

The salary for their job and any comments will then be posted anonymously for others to view.

Since glassdoor.com was launched in the U.S. two months ago, more than 50,000 company reviews and salary reports have been published online.

Many of these are from multinationals such as Microsoft and IBM.

The site's co-founder says the aim is to give employees information to make informed choices about where they work.

Already several British employers have a small number of ratings, including the BBC and Health Service, but the salaries are given only in dollars.

Entries which are thought to be bogus are deleted, as are potentially libellous comments about bosses.

Glassdoor.com, so called because it tries to show what is really going on inside offices, is the brainchild of Robert Hohman.

The former Microsoft employee says he wanted to bring more transparency to the world of business.

'People don't talk enough about how they can be more valuable,' he added. 'This should help them. Knowledge is power.'

Mr Hohman said details of several thousand employees of major British firms would be added to the site later this month.

Workers will then be able to log on and find out these details for free, once they have posted their own salary or review.

Some entries on the site so far are favourable, others are distinctly less so, with some bosses coming in for particularly heavy criticism.

One person claiming to be a BBC technician describes managers there as 'utterly clueless'.

And a London Underground engineer calls the firm a 'good place to hide if you want an easy life'.

But Glassdoor.com insists that even negative ratings are useful to employers as a means of gathering feedback from staff and staying ahead of the competition.

The website has an incentive to remain in employers' good books as it depends for income on advertising by big companies.

Postings are closely vetted to weed out inaccuracies, with around one in ten removed.

If it proves a success, the site could end the traditional British reserve over discussing salaries with the boss.

A survey earlier this year revealed that 51 per cent of employees had felt too embarrassed to discuss pay in a job interview or request a rise in their current position.

Attitudes to pay are already under threat from Harriet Harman's controversial Equality Bill.

This legislation would force firms to reveal the salary gap between their male and female staff to highlight how women have slipped behind.