In the wake of controversies surrounding “creative accounting”, financial mismanagement and accountability in Malaysia, something that happened on the other side of the world, where I now work, made me think about our own relationship with money and transparency.
In Sweden, employees can legally find out how much their colleagues earn without too much hassle — and without those colleagues necessarily knowing that their salaries have been looked up.
I applaud this transparency for many reasons. Yet when I personally found myself at the receiving end of it, I was surprisingly perturbed.
One day over lunch, a fellow colleague, junior to me both in age and experience, asked whether I enjoyed my additional role as the Organ Donation Link Nurse in our cardiothoracic intensive care unit (ICU), alongside my regular work as a bedside ICU specialist nurse.
I told him how I had stumbled into the position rather unwillingly and with a great deal of scepticism.
When I was first offered the role, I could not understand why I had been chosen. At the time, I felt I could just about manage with the Swedish language, let alone take on a role that required communication, coordination, and responsibilities beyond my own unit and my comfort zone — regionally and even nationally.
I contemplated the offer for about two weeks before reluctantly saying yes.
Two years later, while attending a National Organ Donation Conference in another Swedish city, the Organ Donation Link Doctor in my unit, with whom I work closely, and I found ourselves casually reflecting on how far we had come in our respective roles.
I told him how little confidence I had had in myself when the role was first offered to me, and how sceptical I had been about accepting it.
He said my nurse manager had probably suggested me for the position because he saw some potential in me and, at the same time, wanted to see what I had to offer. According to my doctor colleague, instead of merely coping with the role, I had “exploded” in it.
I had apparently outdone and outshone even my own expectations.
Perhaps that was because I compensated for my lack of confidence in the local language by putting my heart into something that mattered deeply to me. The sense of duty and responsibility gave me the strength and drive not merely to occupy the position, but to take it seriously enough to want to put my unit on the map of excellence.
So there I was, happily yapping away about my experience, how much I enjoyed the work and the support I received from everyone involved, when my colleague suddenly blurted out, in an otherwise friendly manner:
“So you are the one who took my portion of the salary increment this time.”
I was taken aback. There was no confrontation. He was not aggressive. But I did not like the accusation.
I could almost feel the blood draining from my face. The joy I had felt just moments earlier while sharing something I was proud of simply flew out of the window.
I asked him what he meant. He told me that he had obtained information about our salaries and knew whose salaries had recently increased. He mentioned two other colleagues who had also received relatively good increases.
He then explained his understanding of the situation: his own salary had risen sharply earlier in his career, but the increases had since become smaller. In his view, colleagues like me, who had taken on additional responsibilities or contributed in other ways to the unit, were now receiving a larger share of what was available for salary increases.
Our salaries are individually determined, with performance and contribution among the factors considered during the annual salary review. During these discussions, we are informed of the range within which an employee’s salary increase could potentially fall, based on the pool of money available. We are then told exactly how much of an increase we will receive that year.
My colleague therefore appeared to see the salary pool as something of a pie: a bigger slice for one colleague meant a smaller slice for another.
That conversation stayed with me. I have never made a habit of looking up what my colleagues earn. Neither do I routinely ask them nor tell them what I earn. For me, salary has always been private.
But there is another reason I prefer not to know. Knowing exactly what everyone around me earns could create resentment. Worse, it could subtly change the way I behave towards a colleague — intentionally or subconsciously.
A facial expression. A comment. A change in body language. A quiet thought of, Why does she earn more than me when we do the same job? She is lazier than me. Why does she deserve more?
In an ICU, those things matter. Our day-to-day work depends enormously on teamwork. The power distance within our unit is also very small. Nurses, assistant nurses and doctors work closely together, and I would describe our working environment as excellent.
I value that enormously, and I want to preserve it.
Over the years, I have learned to treasure a healthy working environment beyond monetary gain. And yet, despite how uncomfortable that lunch conversation made me feel, I still believe there is something valuable about the Swedish culture of transparency.
That brings me back to Malaysia. Would greater salary and financial transparency create animosity among Malaysian colleagues?Absolutely.
People would compare. People would become angry. Questions would be asked. Some people would probably discover that someone they considered less deserving was earning more than they were.
But perhaps some uncomfortable questions need to be asked.
Transparency does not automatically eliminate corrupt practices, favouritism or financial mismanagement. That would be far too simplistic. But transparency makes unexplained disparities harder to hide and forces institutions — and, most importantly, those in positions of power — to justify decisions that would otherwise remain comfortably invisible.
Perhaps it could also shift some of our competitiveness towards merit: What have you contributed? What responsibilities have you taken on? What value have you added?
That seems far healthier than competing on some of the superficial and unproductive platforms we seem so fond of — platforms that have little to do with merit or actual contribution.
My colleague’s comment bothered me when it happened. I will not pretend otherwise. But I have come to terms with it and moved on.
If anything, the experience has made me even more determined to show what the only Malaysian in my unit has to offer.
There is a personal irony here. During my years working in Malaysia, despite being Malaysian myself, I sometimes felt that being vocal, questioning decisions, and taking my responsibilities seriously made me inconvenient to those above me. I experienced bullying from people in positions of authority, and colleagues who knew me well suggested that perhaps I was perceived as a threat.
I cannot know what was in those managers’ minds. But I do know the difference between working in an environment where speaking up can make those above you uncomfortable, and one where your willingness to contribute is welcomed, applauded and, importantly, given room to grow.
Having now worked within two very different workplace cultures, I have come to value something that cannot be captured on a salary sheet: an environment where people can question, contribute and excel without feeling that doing so makes them a threat.
That does not make salary transparency unimportant. Quite the opposite. It has made me realise that transparency works best when it exists alongside a workplace culture mature enough to handle what that transparency reveals.
There is a broader irony in all this.
Transparency can make us uncomfortable because it exposes differences we might prefer not to see. But secrecy has its own price. It allows inequality, favouritism and poor decisions to exist without scrutiny — and when that becomes embedded in a culture, the consequences can slowly eat away at a nation.
Perhaps the real question is not whether transparency makes us uncomfortable. Perhaps the real question is whether we, as Malaysians, are mature enough to deal with what transparency reveals, or whether some forms of transparency simply need to become the norm, whether we are comfortable with them or not.
Sandra Laxmana is a Malaysian nurse working in Sweden.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
