Could wage transparency become a legal right? That question is being asked after the Cabinet Office’s Equality Hub responded to an open letter from tech recruitment company Liberty Hive confirming it will “continue to call on employers” to provide salary information in job adverts. It begs the question, will we see new laws emulating gender pay gap reporting, imposing direct obligations on larger organisations to comply?
People Management reports on this and the government’s push for employers to be transparent about salary and to stop asking about previous salary during the recruitment process. The letter says: “The government’s ambition is that, by giving everyone the information to understand what their skills are worth and preventing them from being held back by their previous earnings, this will empower them to negotiate on a level playing field.”
Liberty Hive’s letter to the DWP’s Lord Younger refers to the government’s pay transparency pilot which was launched in March 2022. They want to know when this pilot will finish and when the findings will be published. They also refer to their own campaign, The Great Salary Reset, which was launched in January calling on the government to bring in two new laws in two areas. First, prohibiting an employer from asking a job candidate questions about their salary history. Second, making it a legal requirement to list salary details on job adverts.
So, time will tell whether the government moves forward with either or both of those ideas, but in the meantime, employers could choose to do it on a voluntary basis. So where do we stand on that? It’s a question I put to Glasgow-based Lesley Finlayson:
Lesley Finlayson: “Well, Joe, I think this is a really good idea and the main reason for that is, I think, there is a lot of evidence that shows that if a salary range is listed in a job advert then from the ‘get go’ it gives women a really strong footing to negotiate their pay on a fairer basis and there's also a lot of evidence that there is a gender bias which can influence salary negotiations. That's basically because women are traditionally less assertive, maybe less self-confident, and maybe going to be less pushy, basically, in a salary negotiation and those traits are more seen as male character traits. Even if a woman demonstrates those traits, it can be seen quite negatively and so if there's a salary range in the advert that is immediately giving them a good basis to start the negotiation, and it's counting out some of those factors. There's also a lot of evidence, as well, that when women are asked about their salary history, so during an interview, for example, this can undermine their confidence and recent research, for example conducted by The Fawcett Society, showed that. So, all these things, I think, can bake inequalities into salary and the initiative proposed by the government whereby they're saying list the salary, don't ask about salary history, seeks to try and circumvent that.”
Joe Glavina: “What's the incentive for clients to adopt these initiatives, Lesley? I can see a potential negative, which is you might have to pay people more, so what’s the positive here?”
Lesley Finlayson: “Well, employers all over are really looking at trying to be more transparent and, obviously, trying to promote women onto an equal footing and, obviously, for example, publishing their gender pay gap is a real highlight point and organisations are looking to try and reduce the gender pay gap and this could be a positive action they could take, something that has been demonstrated to assist with women's pay. Also, there's just a general want within employers to be fair and to be transparent and this is one way that you can obviously do that.”
Joe Glavina: “So what’s the take-away for HR professionals listening to this, Lesley?”
Lesley Finlayson: “So, I would say to HR professionals that this is something that we are increasingly seeing employers doing and there's definitely a shift towards greater salary transparency, and employers are increasingly publishing their salary ranges. I think they should be really trying to get ahead of the curve on this and considering if that's something that they can adopt now and also looking at their internal pay structures so that they are confident that it's something that they will be able to follow through with.”
The CIPD backs the campaign by Liberty Hive which explains why they cover it extensively in People Management. Their latest article is ‘Government wants employers to provide salary information in job ads, it confirms in open letter response’ and we have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.
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