UK “say what you pay” rules will drive wider review of pay practices

Susannah Donaldson, employment law expert at Pinsent Masons, was commenting on the new “say what you pay” requirement, which will allow jobseekers to know what a role pays before applying. The government has said it will bring forward legislation “as soon as possible”, although important details, including the scope of the requirement, precisely what information employers must provide, implementation and enforcement, will follow.

The announcement follows the government's consultation on equal pay and pay discrimination earlier this year. That consultation proposed requiring all employers to publish pay information in job adverts or, where there is no advert, provide the information in writing before interview. However, it deliberately left open questions about whether employers should provide a specific salary, pay range or benchmark rate and what conditions or benefits should be covered.

The announcement reports “early analysis” showing that 94% of consultation respondents supported the requirement, including 93% of businesses.

Employers are being encouraged to get ahead of the new requirement, with the prime minister calling on businesses to include pay information in job adverts before the legislation takes effect.

This development brings Great Britain closer to the EU pay transparency directive, which requires employers to tell jobseekers the starting salary or pay range in the vacancy notice before interview and prevents employers asking candidates about their pay history. Employees can also request information about their individual pay and average pay levels, broken down by sex, for workers doing the same work or work of equal value.

Donaldson said: “Despite the traditional association of pay transparency measures with tackling gender inequality, the government clearly sees transparency as having a much broader role.”

“Its announcement also focuses on improving access to job opportunities for young people, who can be particularly disadvantaged by unclear salary expectations when entering the workforce. That sits alongside the government’s broader ambition to strengthen equal pay protections, potentially extending them to disability and ethnicity.”

“Taken together, these developments point towards a much wider expectation that employers should be able to explain how they set pay and demonstrate that their pay practices deliver fair outcomes across their workforce”, she added.

The UK announcement also follows government guidance published in March on increasing transparency around pay, promotion and rewards. The guidance encourages employers to examine how they determine pay levels, promotions, salary reviews, bonuses and access to learning and development. It recommends making internal promotion and transfer opportunities visible to everyone, explaining how jobs are placed within pay bands, and publishing the criteria and processes used for promotion, salary review and bonus decisions.

Employers should also make clear whether pay and other benefits are negotiable. The guidance goes further operationally. It encourages employers to remind employees about relevant policies before performance reviews and bonus awards, hold managers accountable for following them, create routes for employees to raise concerns and monitor promotion, seniority, retention and reward data by sex and, where appropriate, other characteristics.

Donaldson said: “This announcement should not come as a surprise. The EU has already embraced much greater pay transparency, reflecting the longstanding concern that information gaps can make it harder for workers to identify and challenge unequal pay.”

“For employers, this is therefore about more than adding a salary range to a job advert. It points towards a wider expectation that businesses should be able to explain how they set pay, how people progress through salary structures and whether those arrangements produce fair outcomes.”

“Employers may want to review recruitment templates alongside their wider approach to pay bands, promotion criteria, salary reviews and bonuses”, she said.

Until the government responds fully to the consultation and publishes its legislation, questions including what constitutes sufficient salary information, how salary ranges will work and how the new obligation will be enforced remain to be settled.

Donaldson said: “Employers will make the greatest impact if they look at pay transparency as part of their wider gender pay gap strategy, rather than as a standalone compliance exercise. With gender pay gap action plans becoming mandatory from spring 2027 for employers already within the reporting regime, there is a real opportunity to join the dots. Greater transparency around starting salaries, pay progression and promotion can form part of a much broader plan to identify where pay gaps arise and, importantly, take meaningful steps to address them.”

The new pay transparency requirement is likely to form part of a much wider overhaul of equal pay enforcement. The government’s consultation earlier this year also covered strengthening the use of job evaluation schemes, tougher equal pay audit requirements following breaches and the creation of a new Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit.