One universal rule you may want to remember: never bring up salary as a conversation topic. Research has found that workers all around the world are not comfortable with talking about their salary and other employment benefits like vacation, sick time and bonuses with colleagues as well.

From a survey on Monster.com gathering responses from 3,000 people, 35% of workers say that they are never comfortable talking about salary with co-workers.  An additional 20% of workers say they are seldom comfortable talking with fellow employees about their pay. Just 18% of workers say they are very comfortable talking about salary, while 14% say they are often comfortable when discussing salary, BusinessNewsDaily reported.

However, those numbers are dependent on location of workers. Workers in North America were most privy with this issue of talking about salary, with 63% of workers in the US and 61% of workers in Canada stating their discomfort with talking about salary.

On the flipside, European workers were quite open with talking about their earnings, with 49% of UK workers stating this. This was especially so for Germans, where 64% of German workers were comfortable with talking about pay, the report stated.

Theo HRM