NEW YORK (MainStreet) — What would your office be like if everyone knew what everyone else made? A few companies around the country are changing the rules of salary secrecy. At these companies, every salary is on the table, from the CEO down to the interns.

“We knew it would be a big deal for us,” says Carolyn Kopprasch, chief happiness officer at Buffer, a social media management tool with 1.4 million users. Buffer published the company’s salaries — which are based on a formula that factors in job title and level of experience — in 2013.

“All of our employees had to agree to make things public before we pushed the button,” she says. “At the end of the day we figured the more we can talk about it and get it out there, the better.”

The company now has 24 employees, and all of them are “the type of people who love to share,” Kopprasch says. “There’s no speculation, no secrecy. It allows us to focus on what we’re really here to do.”

Buffer is a “personal, personable workplace,” Kopprasch says. The level of openness and honesty extends far beyond just salaries, and that’s by design. At the start of every week, employees are paired off with one another. During the week, they meet in person, via phone, email or Skype to communicate — about everything.

“We are integrated into one another’s lives,” she says. “We talk about personal improvement, our families and our hobbies. The point is, we don’t attract the kind of people who like to separate life and work.”

People who aren’t comfortable with open co-worker relationships won’t be a good fit at Buffer, Kopprasch says.

“We believe in work/life integration and work/life balance. Transparency is a big piece of how we’re able to find success with that. Our employees work remotely, and we trust them to manage their energies and time.”

Such trust among co-workers wouldn’t be the same — and might be unachievable altogether — if there were secrecy around compensation and benefits, Kopprasch says.

“When you make salary a non-issue, it promotes trust within the team. When you’re all on an even playing field, suddenly you get excited about ways your company can improve,” she says.

Salary transparency also makes discussions easier when hiring new employees, she explains. People who are aren’t naturally open and honest will be weeded out during the interview process once they realize there are no secrets.

“When we’re interviewing someone, there’s no negotiation,” she says. “You can consult our formula and see right away where you stand. Public salaries attract the kind of people who think that transparency is exciting, and that’s what we want.”

Dane Atkinson, CEO of SumAll, a social media analytics platform that employs 50, also has published salaries, but they aren’t formula-based. Also, figures are only made available internally, not publicly. Atkinson says he believes that while compensation transparency is important, privacy to family and friends should also be maintained.

“Compensation is such a critical identifier of what people consider their value to be,” Atkinson says. “There is an invisible cost of keeping secrets. In a normal company, people inevitably find out in some fashion they are underpaid, and because it’s a corporate secret, the only retaliation is to work a little less, steal a laptop or stay stressed out all the time. We wanted to make sure that wouldn’t happen.”

Atkinson says SumAll is a meritocracy. If someone is underperforming compared with their co-workers, their pay will be cut. In this way, the company’s salaries are “self-regulating.” By the same token, when someone is performing at a higher level, they are rewarded with higher pay.

“We are completely transparent and we are constantly revising our review process,” he says. “We have seen how the performance of peers helps correct salaries.”

When salaries and other company financials are transparent, you end up with an “empowered workforce” that isn’t afraid to make decisions for the good of the team, Atkinson says. SumAll employees are more willing to put in extra hours to finish projects quicker because they understand the cost to the company when there are projects on hold due to long delays.

“It continues to impress me how our team consistently seeks to do what’s best of the group. They think broadly,” he says. “In most companies, people are just looking to make their lives easier, but when you are open with your employees about all the cost components in your organization, they realize, ‘If I put in a little extra time here, I will save money elsewhere.’ They don’t see the rest of the company as this nebulous cloud of ‘other people.’”

When questions about raises and compensation come up — and they do — Atkinson says the conversation is easier since he can speak openly and honestly about other employees’ salaries.

“We can say, ‘If you want to make more, model yourself after David. He’s making more at this company, and here’s why,’” he says. “Everyone can see their career path right in front of them, and all those discussions become so much healthier and better informed.”

Even with a salary formula in place, when performance warrants it, raises are always an option, Kopprasch says.

“We wouldn’t say, ‘OK, we’re going to give you more money now,’ but we would adjust the salary formula,” she says. “We have already done this several times. When we saw people who were leaders, we added the title of ‘senior’ to our formula to recognize them. Our formula is a living, breathing document — not something that’s set in stone.”

Another advantage to public salaries, Kopprasch says, is that there can be no question about equal pay for men and women.

“One thing we hadn’t thought of when we started this was the removal for the opportunity for discrimination,” she says. “Whether intentional or not, we know there are often disparities in pay for men and women. But when you have to be able to justify your compensation structure to the world, there’s no room for that. That’s definitely something to be proud of.”

— By Kathryn Tuggle for MainStreet