Their latest money maker is a tool that is likely to revolutionize the relationship between employers and current employees.

The Personal Salary Report, currently priced at an extremely affordable $29.95, is a fourteen page detailed (and personalized) product that documents in detail that value of a particular employee's combination of skills, responsibilities, experience and education. Usable in salary negotiations or job changes, the tool takes the salary conversation to new levels by giving the employee access to data that is going to be more substantive than anything most supervisors or recruiters have in their arsenals. Not only is it a sea change in Industrial Relations, it is a harbinger of things to come.

Given the economic climate, it is pretty easy to forget that the demographics that drive our industry are immutable forces that lead to inevitable conclusions. Labor shortages and a rapidly aging workforce will inevitably create a climate in which the employee has significantly greater control and influence than we see today. The flattening of information access requirements, increased availability of information that used to be hidden, the flattening of organizations, projectization and a general trend towards decentralization all conspire to create a world in which the employee becomes a proactive participant with greater leverage in a range of circumstances.

With all of the media attention focused on recent layoffs, the fact that the power of the individual employee is growing rapidly takes a temporary backseat. Very recently, the only way a "regular joe" could gain access to competitive salary information was by knowing a compensation analyst and picking through the discipline's jargon. Even then, it was fairly hard to substantiate the data with conviction. The Personal Salary Report, built of compensation analyst's data, changes everything.

It was not all that long ago that the only way an employee could conceive of having real salary control was by joining a guild or trade union. In some segments pf our economy, this old fashioned model, rooted in the lack of availability of information, still has relevance. Our take, however, is that "representation" is on the verge of a whole new meaning. It is much more likely to be related to individuals and their ability to manage personal details (like accounting, medicine and legal services) than it is to a collective that panders to the midsection of the crowd. There is, however, a meaningful range of similarity between the class of agents who are emerging to help people optimize the results of data like the Personal Salary Report. 

The very few members of our industry who understand that a community is something other than a specialized resume database are at the cutting edge of dealing with the  newly 'empowered'. A look at the Personal Salary Report will quickly alert you to the fact that a new level of sophistication and professionalism are about to enter the salary discussion. Usually, this is an intimate conversation between boss and subordinate with no clear means of arbitration if an impasse is reached. The employer's position, primitive in the extreme, is a form of "love it or leave it". Early on in the proliferation of the Personal Salary Report, you should expect to see the development of salary appeals boards that, in the spirit of "retention", allow an employee to see the boss overruled.

That a routine audit of personal salary is now affordable in a form that withstands scrutiny is an idea with lightning fast uptake. Without advertising or fanfare, Salary.com has seen unit sales in the 10s or thousands of units in the first month. This is recurring revenue with the regularity of a personal physical or a car tuneup. The wonderful thing about their business model is that their partners are able to share in the good fortune immediately.

Hat's off to the Salary.com team for fielding an idea that is liable to lead our industry into more growth.

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