BE 631: How and When to Discuss Salary in English

This is the Business English Podcast, episode 631. How and when to discuss salary in English. Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.

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Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Hello, Lindsay. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great, Aubrey.

How are you? How's it going? I am excellent. Quick question for you. Yes. Do you often talk with people about their salary? Well, I talk with my partner about salary, but not a ton with friends.

But I do know like some friends talk with other friends about salary a bit more than I do. Right. If you're in the same industry as someone, you might be more likely to, right? Yeah, but not so much.

What about you? I feel like it most often comes up with that, right? When it's within the same industry, someone's maybe interviewing for a new job or a job in your industry. And so they want to know what competitive salaries are.

For sure. For sure. Today's episode is inspired by a question in YouTube. Don't forget, guys, that we have a YouTube channel for All Ears English. So go over there and type in All Ears English.

Hit that subscribe button. Okay? Yes. I'll read it for us. This is from Max Galvin136, who said, Hey, Aubrey, Lindsay, and Michelle, super interesting episode.

What about salary in the USA? Base salary? Could you explain it in an episode? Thanks. So, yeah, this is interesting because in American business culture, we don't always ask someone's salary, but you definitely might have conversations about this in general, about salaries for different fields or careers.

You could also have a conversation with coworkers if you're a decision maker, maybe about compensation packages for new hires. Oh, for sure. So it will come up and we need to be okay. We just kind of need to know the cues of when is it appropriate.

Like if you're at a dinner party with friends who are in all different industries, you're not necessarily going to say, so how much do you make, right? I mean, you could, you know, you could break some norms, which could be good, I guess, but you know. That's interesting because I feel like in general, it's considered maybe a little bit tacky to ask or to offer, right? If someone just randomly throws out how much they make, I would be like, really?

Yeah. It's a little rude. It's a little rude. I agree. Okay, guys, go ahead and hit the follow button right here on Business English. Don't forget to do that because that way the episodes will drop right into your listening queue three days a week.

You don't want to miss a single episode that we publish here. All right. So we're first going to share some of the terminology that we use around salary. The first one is starting salary, right?

This is the amount of money an employee is paid when they first begin a job before any future raises or promotion, just the amount they're offered when they begin the job. Yes, exactly. So for example, the starting salary for the marketing coordinator position is 62K a year. We use the phrase K to mean a thousand.

I use that a lot. Do you find yourself saying K a lot? I do. I'll say 62K. Sometimes I'll hear people say 62 grand, but I'm more likely to say K. Yeah, I kind of say both.

Grant is a little more slangy, I think. Yeah, I think so too. But $62,000 or you could also say $62,000 per year with a performance review after six months.

Yeah, or for example, although company A offered a higher starting salary, company B had better long-term career opportunities. So this is where you're comparing salaries offered when you're looking at multiple job opportunities. Yeah. Yes.

And then next one, base salary. So this is kind of the fixed amount of money that an employee is guaranteed to earn per month. And so that implies that everything else could be a bonus, a commission, overtime, or other perks or incentives.

Exactly. Yeah. So I could see where this would be confusing that these could be the same starting salary, base salary. This is more about what you earn before any bonuses and commission, which a lot of especially sales jobs are often structured with that bonus pay.

So the base salary might be lower, but the earning potential could be quite high. Right, exactly. So for example, my base salary is competitive, and I can also earn an annual performance bonus.

Or during the interview, I asked whether the base salary was negotiable or fixed for all new hires. Yeah, this is interesting. Do you think, Lindsay, that salary should come up in the interview process? And if so, when?

Like at what point? Oh, that's tricky. I haven't been on the interviewee side in a while, so it's hard. I would say generally the advice to people who are interviewing for a job is to wait until you get the job offer and then you know they want you, so it's the time to kind of negotiate harder.

I think the traditional advice is not asking. It probably was in the, hopefully it was in the job listing. I know in certain states it has to be listed in the job listing now by law, like in Colorado, you have to list the salary. You can't just have a job offer with no salary expectations listed.

Interesting, which is nice for people looking for just, it's difficult to go into that interview with no idea what the salary is being offered, right? Tricky. Oh my gosh, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm curious how this is in other cultures, right? I feel like this. Yes, we have a global, you know, business culture. But depending on the country and the culture, this could be very different how much you talk about it, and how clear it is when you're first hired.

Oh, yeah. It's so important. I know in the US in higher level jobs, you're often, especially in the marketing world, you're often asked to do like a project in your second or third interview. So you could go for like a month interviewing with a company without knowing.

I mean, that's crazy. The idea of not knowing. Sometimes it's a very long process. Yeah. Yeah. Really tricky. Well, we have a couple other terms here.

First of all, commission. We had mentioned this is money earned that is usually based on sales, business generated performance, usually calculated as a percentage of the value of sales, but it depends. Yeah, exactly. So you could say her commission exceeded her base salary because she had an outstanding quarter.

right? Or the sales rep receives a 10% commission on every new client they bring in. So yeah, this is interesting because we also use this word another way in English. My dad is often painting commissions.

And so this is artwork that is commissioned by someone and they're asking for specific details on it. So just be aware if you hear the word commission, it might not have anything to do with salary because we do use this word a few different ways in English. Yeah. Be careful there.

You can see it as a verb. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to use this word. Maybe we'll do that in a different episode another day. Lastly, we have bonus, right?

This is extra money that's paid in addition to an employee's regular salary, usually as a reward for strong performance, maybe a percentage of company profits or achieving specific goals. Yeah. Or it could also be like a sales bonus, but usually commission is a more formal structure for sales bonuses, right? For how much you personally sell.

Okay. Everyone on the project received a year-end bonus for exceeding their performance targets. So a year-end bonus. Sometimes you might have like a holiday bonus that managers will give out, things like that.

Exactly. Or the manager announced that employees who met their sales goals would receive a quarterly bonus. So yeah, it could be that the bonuses are like quarterly like that, or like you said, maybe a holiday bonus. So yeah, it's interesting how even if you're told there will be a bonus, you would still need details about that.

There's all kinds of structures for that. Yes. Have you ever listened to native speakers and thought, I understand the words, but I still feel slightly lost. That's because real English conversations include more than vocabulary.

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All right, Aubrey. So we are here for a role play. So here we are business partners discussing the salary of a potential new hire. Okay, good. Yeah, I'll start us out.

Oh, did you get a chance to review the compensation package for the new hire? Yes, I did. The starting salary seems a bit low for someone with that level of experience.

Oh, really? I haven't looked at it yet. Yeah, the base salary is competitive for entry level, but this isn't entry level. This role isn't entry level.

Yeah, if there's commission and bonus potential, that could make up for it. True, but I think we should offer a stronger guaranteed base salary. Okay, sounds good. I'll look it over this afternoon.

All right. Yeah. Because a big part of that is making sure that the position is competitive, right? That's the other side of it. Right. You want to attract talent, the kind of people you want to be working with.

So you want it to be competitive. Yes. But yeah, this is definitely when these types of conversations come up the most often, right? For, you know, if you're in leadership and you're trying to figure out what a starting salary should be set at.

Yes, exactly. So we had a little conversation here. So you said, did you get a chance to review the compensation package? And I said, yes, I did. The starting salary seems a little bit low for someone with that level of experience, right?

And then you said the base salary is competitive for entry level, but we're hiring someone that's not an entry level position. And then I mentioned, I said, well, if there's commission and bonus, maybe that could make up for it.

Yep. And, and that was it. That was the end of the end of the role play. Yeah. And you're like, Oh, I think we should offer a stronger guaranteed base salary.

Yeah. This is interesting because a lot of some people are used to working for, you know, commission bonus, especially in the sales field. But a lot of people want that guaranteed base salary because that's more like guaranteed funds that you can plan on. Yeah, of course.

Absolutely. It's good to have that. To know what you can count on is good for sure. But it definitely, you know, it's interesting because a lot of people are pushed more, are motivated by, you know, if they're working on commission, then they're having to like really apply themselves in order to put food on the table, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think it depends on your personality, maybe like where you are in your life. Do you have a family or are you single? Like depends on so many things, how you like to work, right?

Exactly. Right. Interesting. Yes. Good. Another episode to check out, guys. When should you let something play out? This is episode Business English 630.

Go and check that out after you finish up today. Aubrey, any final takeaway? Yeah, this was a really interesting episode about... play out and letting things play out.

So don't miss that one. Yes. And yeah, for a final takeaway, this is really interesting how cultural this is, right? If you work in American business culture, you do want to be a little bit careful around conversations about asking what someone makes, asking about salary, but it could definitely come up.

So you need this vocabulary. Yeah, 100%. So open a conversation with someone. If you're practicing English or you're talking to a native speaker, ask these questions.

Is it common to talk about salary with your friends? Get into some of the cultural nuances. This will improve your English, build your connection and give you that knowledge, that global knowledge, right? Yeah.

Absolutely. Really interesting topic. Thank you for sending it in, guys. You can also leave your questions on YouTube, just like Maxigalvin did. Yeah.

Thanks for all of the great questions that make for really great episodes. All right. Good stuff, Aubrey. I'll see you back here very soon. You have a good day.

You too. See you next time. All right. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.

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