Is salary transparency an obvious help for jobseekers, or are there hidden downsides? We get two writers to hash it out in this week’s Debate
YES: Salary transparency prevents time-wasting and makes interviews more meaningful
In today’s competitive job market, transparency is paramount. It’s no longer just a nice thing to have – it’s a game changer for both candidates and companies. Publishing salaries fosters trust, streamlines the hiring process and ensures everyone’s time is well spent. Salary clarity upfront allows job seekers to make informed decisions before investing hours in applications and interviews, reducing wasted time and effort for both sides.
Let’s be honest – money matters. Pretending it doesn’t just creates unnecessary friction. Plus, when handled poorly, salary secrecy leaves a bitter taste in the candidates’ mouths. Every candidate, whether successful or not, becomes a potential spokesperson for your company. A great experience means they’ll sing your praises. A bad one? They’ll make sure others hear about it!
Salary transparency also provides essential context. Job titles vary wildly across industries and companies. What one company calls a “vice president” may pay £95,000, while another offers £150,000+ for a similar position. A “sales director” could be anywhere between £60,000 to £120,000, depending on sector and company size. Without published salaries, candidates are left second-guessing a role’s seniority and value.
Paradoxically, pay transparency makes salary less of an important conversation or sticking point. When pay is upfront, interviews shift from a negotiation minefield to meaningful discussions about skills, culture, and fit – a win-win for all involved!
Keeping salaries secret doesn’t benefit businesses – it just fuels pay gaps, negotiationdisparities and wasted hiring cycles. Publishing salaries isn’t just fair; it’s smart business. Let’s stop making hiring harder than it needs to be.
Beth Hope is an executive coach and director on the International Coaching Federation board
NO: Employers may miss out on talented workers who self-select out
Publishing the salary on a job ad may feel like it’s in the interest of workers, but there are plenty of reasons why doing so may actually work against them by making the hiring precis overly rigid. Sometimes, a company is eager to stay open on salary because they are also open to hiring different kinds of people and want to avoid being too prescriptive – instead, they’d like to see who applies and go from there.
It might be that the right person for the role is less experienced than first appeared necessary, which dictates a different salary. Or employers may meet someone who is extremely qualified and can take on far more than the initial job specification entailed. Employers may want the flexibility to offer more or to make changes to the role rather than have it set in stone from the get-go.
Advertising a specific salary could also have the unintended effect of putting certain candidates off. Employers and hiring managers need to put themselves in the shoes of someone who might be coming from a place where they are already feeling like a bit of an imposter. If the salary is deemed beyond their reach in their eyes, candidates might naturally deselect themselves rather than thinking ‘this is something I can do’. Employers may then risk missing out on talented individuals from a varied mix of backgrounds who are able to offer a diverse range of thought.
Instead, employers should focus on paying candidates what they are worth, rather than assuming that the industry rate is suitable. Benchmarks or salary ranges of course have their place – giving employers a good idea of what competitors are offering and candidates a helpful starting point for negotiations, but they shouldn’t be treated as gospel.
Amy Foster is operations and talent director and partner at Rockborne
THE VERDICT: Show me the money
In good news for workers, new research this week showed the average advertised salary in the UK had surged to £41,000. But “advertised” is an important caveat, with the research also showing that more and more UK employers are hiding pay in job ads. For jobseekers writing hundreds of cover letters for jobs that might not even pay the bills, this is naturally frustrating, but are there downsides to complete salary transparency too?
Ms Foster argues that there are, with a number of valid examples – not least the risk that talented (but less confident) candidates may self-select out of jobs they are qualified for. This, in particular, could adversely affect women, with the oft-quoted stat that women only apply for jobs if they meet 100 per cent of the criteria (compared to men who only need 60 per cent) coming to mind.
That being said, though, it’s infinitely harder to close wage gaps when you don’t even know what your peers may be being paid. As Ms Hope raises, transparency is as much about employee trust as anything. Secrecy – especially if pay disparities later come to light – breeds bitterness; that’s a problem for employers and employees alike.
But perhaps, more than anything, we should consider the prime reason most of us get jobs anyway: to be paid. Hiding how much that may be often feels somewhat close to lunacy.