>Companies could fix this overnight by disallowing negotiation
Fix what? What are they "fixing"? They seem to be fixing the problem of people being able to do better than default. Exiting times we live in...
Fix what? What are they "fixing"? They seem to be fixing the problem of people being able to do better than default. Exiting times we live in...
I think that instead of disallowing negotiation at all, we could look to university job courses (the ones that currently teach resume and interviewing skills) to teach negotiation skills and techniques. It would be something that any student could find valuable. Not only would it make young people entering the job market more comfortable with the idea of negotiation, but it would make people on the company side of things more familiar and comfortable with the notion of women negotiating (correcting that prejudice, instead of accepting/ignoring it as the Bergeron-solution does).
If that proves unsuccessful, then less "personal" negotiation processes could be explored before the idea of negotiation was written off entirely. Perhaps sending a form letter with every offer letter saying something along the lines of "I'm sorry but I have to decline [position] because I've received a better offer of [$] from [company]" could work. Some sort of more forumalic approach to negotiation that reduces the human element (and therefore hopefully, the opportunity for human prejudices to manifest. I think that it is best to combat the prejudices however, not work around them).
Much of at least the interview portions of those courses involved splitting off into groups and grilling each other for several hours a quarter. The idea was to help people get over the jitters and feel comfortable bragging about themselves to others. I think that at least in that capacity, the course was effective.
Some people did not take those courses seriously, but that was likely because my university was heavily a co-op/internship school, so everybody taking those courses junior/senior year had already had dozens of interviews (1-15 each round, with up to 3 rounds for each co-op cycle, and either 2 or 3 co-op cycles. Granted interviews for extended internships are not quite the same as regular interviews, lacking most negotiation particularly).
I'm not sure it will work, but it seems to be the wage-side proposal of what e.g. Saturn is trying to do with cars: just say, look, this is our price, take it or leave it. Rather than the traditional car (and salary) pricing model where the real price you're willing to agree to is hidden, and arrived at via a negotiation process. That often results in whoever's better at negotiating getting the better deal. Now if it's a negotiating job that might even be a good thing, because the better negotiators are more valuable to you. Or if it's a job where the skill you're looking for correlates highly with being good at negotiating. But if that's not the case, just making the final offer of what you're willing to pay up front, rather than starting lower and negotiating upwards, could be better idea. Then rather than negotiating per-candidate, you just adjust your offer policy until it's high enough to get the kind of candidates you want.