employers should beware, urges law firm
Some employers fear proposals within the government’s new consultation on equal pay will enable competitors to poach their staff and entwine them with more red tape. Others see the new measures as the law catching up with best practice.
As part of the government’s efforts to prevent pay discrimination it is proposing that employers should publish pay information in job adverts.
According to employment law firm Littler, many employers prefer not to publish data on pay within job adverts as they worry that it is providing their competitors with sensitive, confidential information on their pay structures.
Dónall Brean, senior associate at Littler, told Personnel Today: “Many employers will fear that publishing pay details in job adverts will help their competitors poach their staff.
“Employers also worry that existing employees may demand pay rises based on advertised job roles even though their abilities might not justify a pay rise.”
He said that existing employees could be paid lower rates than new employees for a variety of reasons, such as older salary tiers or shifting market conditions.
The government is also proposing to set up an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit that would mean businesses, argued Brean, would likely be subject to more red tape and regulatory scrutiny.
Brean added that pay ranges in job ads would mirror requirements already seen in US states such as New York and California, and align UK pay transparency laws with the European Union’s Pay Transparency Directive.
Such a move would be a very significant change for the UK jobs market but was not a novel concept and part of a global trend towards pay transparency, he said, with many international employers familiar with this requirement already.
Brean said that although, historically, pay inequalities centred on sex-based discrimination, the government proposals went wider and envisaged tackling ethnicity and disability pay gaps too. But transparency legislation was “notoriously complex and difficult,” he added, as shown by the implementation of the EU directive.
“While the government’s proposals are only in a formative stage, their stated purpose is to deliver a comprehensive reform of the current equal pay framework. Therefore, employers may need to prepare for the biggest change in equal pay obligations on employers since the introduction of gender pay gap reporting almost 10 years ago,” concluded Brean, adding that businesses were already feeling swamped by having to adapt to the Employment Rights Act 2025.
However, Kirstie Loveridge, chief people officer at live entertainment company AEG International, told Personnel Today she was pleased to see ministers make a move on transparency. She said: “Greater transparency around pay is an important step towards creating a fairer and more informed job market, helping candidates make better decisions and encouraging more open conversations between employers and applicants.
“At AEG, we’ve found that being transparent about pay gives applicants the information they need to decide whether a role is right for them before applying, and we’ve seen it improve both the quality of applications we receive and the overall candidate experience.
Loveridge added: “We hope this consultation encourages more organisations to embrace salary transparency and helps make it a standard part of the hiring process across the UK.”
The equal pay consultation closes at 5pm on 27 October 2026, after which ministers will consider the responses before setting out the detailed legislative requirements for employers in England, Scotland and Wales. It can be responded to here.
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