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The Death of the Secret Salary

ended 25. August 2026

New EU pay transparency rules are now taking effect across the EU. They will increase pay transparency, strengthen enforcement of the principle of equal pay between women and men, and improve access to justice for victims of pay discrimination. The UK is currently, consulting, and may follow EU laws which means: 

Employers will have to

  • inform job seekers about the starting salary or pay range in the vacancy notice or ahead of the interview, and no longer be allowed to ask them about their pay history
  • provide employees, on request, with information on their individual pay level and the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value
  • publish information on the pay gap between female and male workers (employers with at least 100 employees)
  • carry out a pay assessment if pay reports reveal a gender pay gap of at least 5% that cannot be justified 

The new rules also improve access to justice for victims of pay discrimination

  • workers who have suffered gender pay discrimination can receive compensation
  • employers that do not meet transparency obligations will need to prove that there was no pay discrimination
  • EU countries should set penalties for breaking the equal pay rule
  • equality bodies and workers' representatives can represent workers in legal or administrative proceedings 

We’ve already seen this in the US and the practice of disclosing salaries has just meant huge salaries being disclosed i.e. 50-150k. Is the law really doing what it was designed to do, or is it getting in the way of good recruitment practices to get the best talent.

Is more regulation going to hurt the job market more, we already know vacancies are at an all time low, will this genuinely improve things for candidates? 

What are your thoughts:

1. Have you seen pay compression surface once ranges went public, either in your own org or with clients?

2. How are you handling it: pay reviews, comms to existing staff, holding the line on new-hire offers?

3. Any examples (anonymised is fine) of a range that was clearly gamed to dodge the spirit of the law?

4. Is your organisation preparing for the UK consultation outcome, or waiting to see what lands?

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Kelly Smallcombe
Fractional Chief People Officer at Meliorem HR Consultancy
The US already ran this experiment and got it wrong: employers posted $130k-$500k ranges to tick a box. A wide range costs the employer nothing and tells the candidate nothing. So what are we actually trying to fix? Gender pay gap reporting hasn't closed the gap in nearly a decade. Why would another law do any better? Two things can be true. Women generally undervalue their own worth, the research backs that up. Maybe the fix isn't another range on a job advert. Maybe it's an honest conversation about actual value. shying away from difficult conversations lands businesses in more trouble than being frank ever will.
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Editor
Harvey Dhillon
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
There is no UK duty to publish a pay range yet, so the compression we see on the client payrolls we run isn't coming from that duty. Some employers have told the Low Pay Commission they have run out of room to squeeze the gap between the minimum wage and the pay just above it. So we price the job before we advertise it, and if the offer would beat the person already doing it, we fix their pay first and tell them, rather than let them read it in an ad. Then we hold the offer at the top of the band, not above it. I have no example of a gamed range, because there is no UK rule yet to dodge. In Great Britain, private-sector gender pay gap reporting starts at 250 staff, but the advert proposal has no size floor. The consultation closes on 27 October and the form is still open, so we are fixing our own bands and waiting on the rest. Putting the number in the advert is overdue. Knowing what your own jobs are worth is the work, and that isn't going away.