Pay Transparency – What’s happening in the HR market?
One of the conversations we have with both candidate and client alike is whether adverts should include a salary and if they don’t, does it just lead to this:
“We regret to inform you that we are unable to proceed with your application due to misalignment in your compensation expectations.”
It’s a polite sentence. But behind it often sits hours of CV tailoring, interview preparation and sometimes annual leave taken to attend meetings only to find out that salary expectations are completely misaligned.
As recruiters working exclusively in the HR space, salary transparency is something we’re talking about more and more with both candidates and clients.
Recently, we ran two LinkedIn polls to understand how HR professionals feel about applying for and advertising roles without salaries attached. The results were telling and perhaps more nuanced than expected.
What Candidates Told Us
When we asked:
“Would you apply for an HR role without a salary listed?”
The responses were:
- Yes – If I wasn’t working: 9%
- Yes – If the role looked good: 36%
- Yes – but I’d be nervous: 15%
- No – waste of time: 40%
So while just over half would still consider applying, a significant 40% would rule it out completely. A real opportunity missed to tap into some great talent.
That’s not quite as stark as research from Personnel Today suggesting 64% of UK workers are unlikely to apply to roles with no visible salary but it’s still significant.
What this tells us is not that candidates won’t apply. Many will. But confidence, enthusiasm and commitment may not be as strong from the outset.
And that matters later in the process.
What Employers Told Us
We then flipped the question and asked HR leaders:
“When hiring, do you advertise your HR roles with a salary?”
The results:
- Yes – we’re transparent: 58%
- No – let’s see who applies: 10%
- No – it’s against company policy: 11%
- No – but I wish I could: 21%
While the majority are transparent, nearly half either don’t share salary or feel restricted from doing so.
This is where the tension sits.
From a candidate’s perspective, lack of clarity can feel like a risk. From an employer’s perspective, there are often very real commercial sensitivities:
- Salary banding reviews underway
- Internal parity concerns
- Fear of competitor visibility
- Market testing at different levels
These are not trivial issues. We completely understand that advertising salary isn’t always straightforward.
What We’re Seeing in Practice
In the past 12 months, we’ve only had two HR roles where we weren’t able to advertise a salary due to internal client considerations.
Both roles attracted higher application volumes, but both required significantly more time to filter due to compensation misalignment.
We saw:
- Candidates operating at a much more senior level than budgeted
- Others assuming flexibility where there wasn’t scope
- Late-stage conversations uncovering expectation gaps
Where salary is shared upfront, the dynamic tends to shift:
- Applications are more targeted
- Shortlists are tighter
- Fewer mid-process withdrawals
- Less time lost at final stage due to expectation gaps
And in a market where HRBP roles alone can be advertised anywhere between £40k and £120k depending on scope and seniority, some indication of level really does matter.
The Broader Market Shift
This conversation isn’t happening in isolation.
Soon the EU Pay Transparency Directive will require employers across the EU to disclose salary ranges in job adverts, alongside strengthened reporting obligations around pay gaps.
The UK is not bound to implement the directive post-Brexit. However, its influence is already shaping wider expectations:
- Multinationals operating across EU and UK markets will need consistency.
- Employees increasingly expect transparency as standard.
- Pay visibility is becoming tied to fairness, governance and employer brand.
The direction of travel feels clear, even if legislation differs.
The Case for Transparency
Where we are able to advertise salary ranges, we consistently see:
For candidates:
- Greater confidence in applying
- Clearer understanding of seniority and scope
- Reduced risk of wasted effort
For employers:
- Better alignment between expectations and budget
- More efficient shortlisting
- Greater candidate commitment throughout the process
- Stronger perception of fairness and openness
Transparency doesn’t just influence attraction. It influences momentum.
A Balanced View
It’s important to say this isn’t black and white.
There will always be circumstances where salary disclosure is genuinely complex or commercially sensitive.
And occasionally, applying “blind” does open unexpected doors. We’ve seen examples where a loosely defined role evolved into a brilliant opportunity for the right person.
But those instances are the exception rather than the rule.
More often than not, clarity upfront reduces friction later.
Our View
We think salary disclosure is steadily shifting from being a “nice to have” to being an expectation.
Not because legislation demands it (yet), but because the market is moving that way.
Where it’s possible to position salary thoughtfully and commercially, we’ve seen it strengthen both engagement and hiring efficiency.
And ultimately, that’s what most HR leaders are trying to optimise: quality, pace and alignment.
If salary transparency is something you’re navigating internally, or simply weighing up ahead of your next hire, it’s a conversation we’re always happy to have.
We spend our time in the detail of HR hiring processes every day and getting it right from the outset is often what makes the difference.