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Fair pay, fair play: the case for salary transparency
7 min read | Sarah Gray | Article | | General
Whether someone is junior or senior, a permanent employee or a contractor, full-time or part-time, one thing they are all entitled to is salary transparency. Being fair and open about pay and reward holds many benefits for businesses – it enhances trust, builds morale, and provides them with a competitive advantage when it comes to both talent attraction and organisational reputation.
Despite the clear business case for fair compensation practices, a significant proportion of employees remain sceptical of employers’ willingness to be upfront about pay. According to our 2025 Salary & Recruiting Trends Guide, which distils insights from a survey of almost 15,000 professionals into topics affecting the world of work, nearly half (46%) of employees don’t believe their organisation is consistently transparent with staff about how pay levels and pay rises are set. This complacency from organisations comes despite the fact that 80% of employees value pay transparency, with over half (52%) saying it’s very important to them.
What’s more, any action being taken by employers to ensure pay transparency is perceived to be thin on the ground, particularly in the private sector. While a mere 7% of employees overall say their organisation publicises all employee salaries, this plunges to just 4% of employees in the private sector but increases to 16% amongst public sector employees. Just 28% of employees overall say their organisation has set criteria for salary increases, meaning that for nearly three quarters (72%), visibility of the steps needed for an increase in remuneration are lacking.
From so many organisations getting pay transparency wrong, comes a clear opportunity to get it right. To do so, employers have to be willing to openly share information about pay structures, pay ranges, and criteria for promotions and pay rises. So what best practices should organisations looking to harness the benefits of salary transparency bear in mind when it comes to devising and implementing a strategy?
Before even beginning to define – or amend – typical salaries and pay bands at your organisation, you need to ensure you have an accurate picture of the going rates and market averages for your roles, and the best and fairest way of doing so is to employ the services of an independent provider.
Obtaining accurate and up-to-date salary data from other organisations is a time-consuming job, and most organisations will lack the resources to dedicate to it at the frequency needed to stay competitive. Using a salary benchmarking service not only gives you an accurate and impartial picture of what your pay and reward strategy should be, but allows you to make data-driven, real-time decisions about remuneration. At Hays, we have a dedicated research team able to provide specific and up-to-date remuneration information from the most relevant peers to your organisation, whether that’s in the private, public, or not-for-profit sector. Not an off-the-shelf product, but a bespoke review based on relevant data sets, our service is agile enough to take into account structure, size and scale, as well as nuances in the industry.
If your salary ranges are both competitive and realistic, there’s no reason not to disclose them. Research has indicated that a job listing with a salary range gets twice the number of applications as one without. Deploying well-worn phrases like ‘comprehensive benefits package’ or ‘competitive salary’, instead of the salary itself, not only leaves candidates with the impression that the pay will be below market average, but also that you don’t value transparency as an employer. If you want your organisation to be perceived as open, honest and fair, including the salary in a job listing – even if it’s just the range – is the best place to begin.
This transparency should not just apply to the job listing, however, but any interactions candidates have with your organisation during the recruitment process. Hiring managers should feel empowered – before, during and after an interview – to freely discuss the salary and any other compensation on offer as part of a job role, without feeling the need to be evasive or dishonest. To ensure full transparency, this should also include any criteria, for example tenure or role seniority, that qualifies someone for the benefits offered.
Open discussions about pay should not be a source of embarrassment, nor should they be something employers shy away from. While discretion should apply in specific cases if employees prefer it, that should not prevent organisations from communicating clear, consistent guidelines and criteria for pay bandings, performance ratings, and salary increases to current staff. These should be easily accessible, kept up to date and available to view at any time.
While awareness and understanding of pay guidelines should be afforded to all employees at your organisation, for people managers, this must go a step further. Since decisions about compensation often lie with managers, it’s critical that they feel sufficiently informed to make sound, unbiased decisions on pay. Providing ongoing training, support and resources around compensation practices and how to communicate these effectively can help empower them to confidently navigate salary discussions with their teams.
Implementing pay transparency is not a finite project – but an ongoing process that runs parallel to the fluctuations of the wider market, and this is why getting it right the first time is so important. Making sure that any pay and benefit strategy you formulate initially is both comprehensive and well-researched puts you in a good place to re-evaluate it on an annual or semi-annual basis going forward.
“Implementing pay transparency is not a finite project – but an ongoing process that runs parallel to the fluctuations of the wider market.”
While it’s sensible to put in placeholders for annual salary reviews, this cadence may still need to change depending on market trends, economic shifts, and the strategic priorities of your organisation. Depending on time pressures and competition for specific skillsets, ad hoc revisions to your compensation strategy may be necessary if your business is to stay competitive in a tight and unpredictable market. This may include ‘temperature checks’ of certain roles – for example new positions, roles with a high turnover, or those where competition for candidates is high – in between the more formal annual reviews.
Looking for real-time salary data to give your business that competitive edge in the hiring game? Get in touch with us today.
Sarah Gray, Projects & Change Director, Hays
Sarah has worked in a number of roles in the Recruitment industry for over 25 years. At Hays , Sarah works in our Solutions & Advisory team, working directly with clients to navigate their talent challenges. She has specific responsibility for our analytics and insights services which include benchmarking, working with a range of clients in the public, private and Not for profit sectors.
