The Government has announced plans to make salary information a legal requirement in job adverts. Charles Millett, Partner and Employment Solicitor at Morecrofts Solicitors, explains what the proposed change could mean for employers and why businesses should start reviewing their recruitment and pay practices now.
The Government has announced plans to make salary information a legal requirement in job adverts. Charles Millett, Partner and Employment Solicitor at Morecrofts Solicitors, explains what the proposed change could mean for employers and why businesses should start reviewing their recruitment and pay practices now.
Under the proposed “say what you pay” rules, jobseekers would no longer have to apply for a role without knowing what they could expect to earn.
The Government says greater openness about pay should become the minimum standard and has said it will bring forward legislation as soon as possible. In the meantime, it is encouraging businesses to start publishing salaries now rather than waiting for the law to change.
What is changing?
The Government plans to make publishing salary information in job adverts a legal requirement.
We don’t have all the detail yet. Further information about the scope of the rules, what employers will need to publish, how the changes will be introduced and how they will be enforced will follow in due course.
For employers, that means there is no need to second-guess exactly what the final legislation will look like. But there is good reason to start looking at existing recruitment and pay practices.
Figures cited by the Government from the CIPD Pay, performance and transparency report (2024) show that 41% of employers always publish salary ranges and only 18% always publish specific salaries.
So, for a large number of businesses, this could mean a change in the way they recruit.
What could this mean for existing employees?
Putting a salary on a job advert might sound like a fairly simple change. The bigger issue for employers could be what happens when existing employees start comparing those advertised salaries with their own.
If someone earning £30,000 sees their employer advertising a similar role for £35,000, it is reasonable to expect them to ask why.
There may be perfectly legitimate reasons for the difference. But employers need to be in a position to explain how salaries have been arrived at and why differences exist.
The Government says publishing salaries upfront can help expose unjustified differences in pay, give workers greater confidence to challenge discrimination and prevent disagreements about pay from escalating into disputes.
That is why employers should think about this as more than just a change to the wording of job adverts. It is also an opportunity to look at how pay decisions are being made across the business.
Pay inequality is part of the picture
The Government has also said the change is intended to help address pay inequalities that can disadvantage women.
Its argument is that hiding salary information forces applicants to negotiate without knowing what an employer is prepared to pay, which can leave women more vulnerable to lower pay offers. Greater transparency should also help workers identify and challenge potentially unjustified differences in pay.
For employers, this is another reason to look at the wider picture rather than simply waiting to change their recruitment adverts when the legislation comes in.
What should employers be doing now?
We don’t have the legislation or the detailed rules yet, so employers shouldn’t make assumptions about exactly what the final requirements will be.
But there are a few sensible things businesses can do now.
Look at your current job adverts. If salaries are regularly left out or described simply as “competitive”, think about how that approach may need to change.
It is also worth looking at pay across similar roles, particularly where there could be a gap between what existing employees earn and what you are now prepared to offer to attract new people.
Employers should also understand how salaries and salary bands are set. If there are differences, you should know why they exist and be able to explain them.
Managers involved in recruitment should have a clear understanding of how salaries are decided too, so that the approach is consistent across the business.
Don’t wait for the law to change
There is still detail to come, and employers won’t know the full extent of their legal obligations until that detail is published.
What we do know is that the Government intends to make publishing salaries in job adverts a legal requirement and is already asking businesses to adopt the approach voluntarily.
So this is a good time for employers to take a proper look at their recruitment and pay practices.
Adding a salary to a job advert is the easy bit. The bigger question is whether employers are ready for the conversations that greater transparency around pay might create.
You can view the full press release published by the Government here.