Opening the debate on Salary Transparency

Today we are launching a new campaign encouraging our industry to open the debate around salary transparency.

There is little doubt that salary transparency will help to create a more equal and inclusive workplace. This has been proven in other countries across 21 states in the US, Germany, Denmark and Iceland with early research showing gender and ethnicity pay gaps are narrowing.

We understand this isn’t simple but it’s a hot topic that isn’t going away with the government launching its first pilot scheme suggesting there could be future law changes around salary transparency.

Change is needed when you consider it will take an estimated 132 years to reach gender pay parity based on the current rate of change (The World Economic Forum). In our industry the IPA shows this trend isn’t heading in the right direction with the gender parity gap increasing in 2021 to 23.5%.

At Liberty Hive we are committed to opening this debate to understand how we can help our industry talk openly around what has historically been a pretty taboo subject! We don’t believe salaries should be a guessing game. Being transparent about salary makes sense as it puts everyone on a firm footing to negotiate pay on a fair basis. We also know that from a practical perspective it saves time and resources.

As a tech platform, we are committed to developing our technology to create the most fair and equitable conditions for our clients and candidates alike, making this one change could make a big difference.

Our data shows it will help companies recruit the best talent more quickly and successfully, whilst improving pay equality:

• When salaries are displayed, the response time is over 50% quicker
• A post that displays a salary receives around 67% more applications than one that does not
• Since we introduced our new salary bands on the Liberty Hive Platform over 65% of our clients openly post compensation
• Jobs posted without any indication of compensation makes the matching process 45% less effective as it results in a greater variation in experience of applicants

What are we doing?

From January 2023 we will be encouraging our partners to list a salary range during the recruitment process and when posting job adverts. We won’t ask our candidates the salary history question and we will work with our agency partners to share best inclusive recruitment practice.

We’re also introducing new technology to our portal, which will provide us with a broader data set that we can use to provide clients with benchmarking for specific roles as needed.

We will continue to monitor and test the results for job posts with and without salary ranges, sharing this openly with our partners.

We will be hosting an event for people in the industry to come together and share learnings and challenges on 23rd February, as well as sharing online training and collateral that provides hints and tips on this subject.

Please feel free get in touch for more information here: https://mailchi.mp/libertyhive/salary-transparency

Interesting stats and facts at a glance:

• 75% of candidates would be more likely to apply for a role that included a salary range.
• 62% of candidates believe they should not be asked about their current or past salary in an interview and this figure increases to 73% amongst Asian workers and 75% for Black workers.
• 57% of women and 54% of men felt less positive about a potential employer when they were asked the salary history question.
• 21 US states have legislation banning employers from asking about salary history. Direct side-by-side comparisons of these states with their neighbours over three years revealed that the move resulted in an average 8% pay increase for women and a 13% pay increase for Black employees. Turnover rates stayed the same, suggesting that organisations can still hire suitable candidates as efficiently as they could previously.
• Denmark: A research study found the pay transparency legislation closed the gender pay gap by 13%.
• In the UK, a salary transparency pilot scheme was launched in March 2022, where participating employers list salary details on job adverts and stop asking about salary history during recruitment. The scheme, run by Baroness Stedman-Scott, indicates that legislation change may also become a reality in the UK soon.