Britain moves to force employers to put salaries in job ads
Britain to make salary disclosure in job ads mandatory
The UK is set to require salary disclosure in job advertisements, according to Reuters. Hacker News commenters immediately probed the loopholes: what happens when a candidate interviewed for one role turns out to fit a differently paid one, and whether companies could simply never hire for the exact advertised position. Others noted that nothing in the rule appears to ban negotiating beyond the posted figure.
Presumably the law will be written to account for advertised role != assigned role, but it can't account for gaming the system by never hiring exactly the advertised position.
- dotdi
I will repost a comment I made here a while ago on a similar discussion. Salary non-disclosure is a dealbreaker for me since being through the situation described below:
A few years back I wanted to get out of the work situation I was in. I looked around, had some interviews, had some offers. None of the postings had salary ranges, as is common where I live.
My eyes, however, were set on a specific small company because I liked their product. The process was long and involved multiple meetings, a take-home problem, and stretched over 2 or so months. I was upfront about what my salary expectations were (wasn't looking for a raise, just a lateral move). They said we discuss salary when you meet the founders, i.e. the last step before getting hired, but they also didn't tell me that my range was way off.
Turns out I had played this 9 week game and turned down other offers just to be severely low-balled by them. Maybe they saw that I really wanted the position and thought they could get away with a low offer.
Obviously, I rejected their offer on the spot. I also promised myself to never, _ever_, be fooled like that again. We talk money before I invest any significant amount of time or I walk.
EDIT: fixed wording.
- lazka
That's already the case where I live, but some companies use the trick that they
advertise a job with high salary, and once you apply they says "sadly this job
is no longer available, but we have this similar one we haven't advertised yet",
which of course comes with lower salary.
- aregue
I have always felt that job ads should include salary information. The main reason is not to waste anyone's time. Often a narrow salary range or a clear link between requirements and salary are much more informative than a job description. I have experienced to apply to a job opening and go through one or more interviews only to find out that the company is actually hiring for a more junior position than the ad copy implied.
A second reason is to avoid discrimination. Applicants that feel disadvantaged, even if they are actually qualified, may hesitate to negotiate for a higher salary in the same way that a other applicants would. The consequence is that they start with a lower salary. This applies specially to women. Plenty of research shows that they are less likely to negotiate their salary.
Research[1] suggests that pay transparency leads to lower average salaries because employers avoid paying higher wages to any one employee to avoid costly negotiations with others. The effect is small, around 2%, and it disappears with increasing degree of unionization. In my opinion this is an acceptable price to pay to reduce pay inequality, which often is much more than 2%. It is also a good argument for joining a union.
- ellen364
Cautiously pleased about this. Some companies in UK pay senior devs £30-35k. And some companies won't discuss that until v late in the process, while importing US-style multiround interviews. It's pretty silly when people get 3 rounds in, take time off work for the interviews, then find out their expectations are so far apart.
- claw-el
Besides ‘salary disclosure’, one other law that really helps improve salary is to ban potential employers from asking candidates’ current/previous salary. This avoids potential employers from offering just marginally better than candidates previous roles…
- sjamaan
> The European Union adopted pay transparency rules the following year, giving member states until June 2026 to implement them in national law.
That's the first I've heard of it, and I've seen plenty of job postings the past year for European companies where there was no salary indication. See for example the recent HN Who's Hiring? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50338728
- Xenoamorphous
Do they say something about the min and max in the range being no more than X% apart? To prevent scenarios like "between £20,000 and £100,000".
- iamflimflam1
The only real reason companies don’t want to put salary ranges on job adverts is that it triggers difficult conversations with staff they have been taking advantage of.
- temp123477
Feels like a law requiring prices on shop shelves. Isn't it self interest to put the salary in the ad? So much saved time. And probably more suitable applicants. I don't apply for a job without knowing the salary. Or via recruiters that tell you upfront (they usually do).
- miki123211
My issue with mandated ranges is how to require the range to be narrow enough, without preventing the candidate from negotiating?
If you don't have any narrowness requirements, you can have a job where the range is $50k-500k, which is useless. If you narrow it to — let's say — 10% of the midpoint, you can say $180k-220k, but then you're not allowed to hire the perfect candidate who won't accept less than $250k, even though you would actually want to pay this much given that person's skills. If the candidate is allowed to negotiate upwards, ranges may gradually, over the course of years, drift downwards, with an implicit understanding that they are unrepresentative of the actual salary you are likely to earn.
With an infinite number of employers and an infinite number of candidates, you would always be able to find the perfect candidate for your mix of requirements and pay them the exact salary that matches those requirements. The real world isn't like that, though, and if you, as an employer, have an offer available, you will get candidates who are under and over qualified for the specific offer you had in mind, and you might nevertheless be able to find a spot for them at some salary that both of you are willing to accept.