Money.

It never ceases to be one of those things that are always on our minds, yet we avidly avoid in serious conversations. How about worth? We all know our worth to ourselves but in the big scheme of things, worth is only but relative. Something, including yourself, is only as valuable as the worth society tries to implement on it. You never ever, for even a millisecond, deserve to go underappreciated no matter the circumstances.

You are a unique, talented, and unparalleled individual who is worth it.

Worth what? Worth it. "It" is what some people would consider debatable, and by "some people" I mostly mean your employers.

Now is the time to sit down if you aren’t already because I am about to do it. I am bringing up the topic of money, even more sensitive, the topic of your hard-earned, sweat & blood pay. You know what you are paid either hourly or salary, and you probably know it all too well. If you are anything like me you know how to estimate your paychecks before you even work all too well. Maybe you even have it down to guestimate how much you'll make even after the government takes away your precious dollars in taxes. Point-blank, whether you like your pay or not, you know it like the back of your hand.

Let's put you on the back burner for a brief moment in time. We all have a closest friend or at least some form of companion or acquaintance at work. I am going to take you one step further to ponder this: what do you think they get paid? Please note, that I am fully aware of the fact that this question might make you feel a little uneasy. Why? Do you fear that they get paid less than you? Or more than you? Which one is worse? I don't know and you probably don't either.

Should you know what your coworkers get paid? Actually, yes.

Society has molded us to believe that if we all knew what each other got paid then everyone would break into intense hysteria and turmoil would rain from the skies. Craziest of all, people might even quit their jobs!!

I sincerely hope you are still sitting down because get this, there is this crazy thing called pay transparency. This is actually just what it sounds like: when there is transparency between the employer and all employees about pay throughout a company or work environment. What might even be more ludicrous is that results show workplaces to be less tense when there is this openness to them. Too bad it hasn't been proven that not keeping secrets might be the secret to people getting along more often.

Oh, wait…

Remember when I told you that you have value and worth, but that tends to be rather relative? Well, as a matter of fact, you are more inclined to feel underpaid and at times even discriminated against when you do not know what your coworkers are getting paid. Do you like working at a place that allows you to feel underappreciated or undervalued simply because they aren't being open about a few numbers?

The United States of America actually has a law to protect your right to discuss your pay. Maybe it is just another one of those things people forget is actually valuable along with their right to vote. An article from 2015 shares that in 2015, T-Mobile was found guilty in court for breaking our precious labor laws by prohibiting employees from sharing their wages with one another. The same article shares that around 50% of all employees have been discouraged or sometimes just prohibited from sharing wages or salaries. There are even plenty of cases in which people are punished for sharing the "confidential" information about their pay.

Employers do not have much of an incentive for pay transparency, just you. Companies where people have an openness with pay also see a much, much smaller pay gap between gender and race. The world wouldn't be perfect with pay transparency but it would be a whole lot better for you and me. Pay secrecy only hurts us and helps us to ignore and support the discrimination that has been in place in the workplace for too long.

So just to get a few things straight. I'm not trying to get you to do anything outrageous about knowing people's pay like walking into work with your salary or wage written across your shirt like some did at Vanity Fair a little while ago. Pay secrecy has been a thing for a long time and just like any other example throughout history change takes time. Share what you have learned and warm people up to the idea of how pay transparency could make work more bearable than it might be now. Knowlege is power and honestly, it might be time to give back some of the company's power to its people.