Increase Transparency & Equity With Salary Ranges on All Job Posts
Years ago in my first HR job I was filing documents in employee personnel folders - yes, physical folders - when I came across the involuntary termination documents of one short-tenured supervisor and the salary information of his replacement.
Y’all, this new supervisor, a woman who had already worked at the company for years, was making half of the salary of the terminated supervisor! Half! And she had no idea. That was the first time it struck me just how purposefully biased and inequitable companies could be around pay discrimination. It absolutely would not be the last.
It happens all the time, a candidate accepts an offer much lower than what the company was willing to pay. You may have even had to onboard these same folks knowing information that you don’t dare share with them, no matter how much you may want to.
These bad practices negatively affect women and People of Color - even more so for Women of Color - far more than white men. According to The 19th, for every 1 dollar a white man earned in 2021, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women earned 75 cents, Black women earned 58 cents, Native American women earned 50 cents, and Latinas earned 49 cents. This is not by accident; it’s by design.
Transparency on Salary Ranges
So what can we do? A lot. Systems change by being broken down into small pieces and addressing those pieces one at a time. This creates steady change and many gains along the way.
Here we’ll focus on one change that will result in big gains. Improve equity, transparency, and the qualification experience by adding meaningful salary ranges to all job postings.
To be very clear, “meaningful” includes the ranges and any data that helps candidates understand where the numbers come from. Wide ranges are meaningless if candidates do not understand what considerations are made in salary determinations.
Do you pay based on location?
Are you posting a job where you’ll accept candidates with anywhere from very little to a whole lot of experience?
Do specific skills result in higher pay than others?
Be honest about what the job actually pays and why.
There are many benefits of sharing meaningful salary ranges on job postings.
It’s Becoming the Law
At least 20 states and several municipalities are requiring employers to be more transparent in salary ranges with new pay equity laws. Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act may be the most popular legislation requiring employers to include salary ranges in all job descriptions, but it is certainly not the only legislation in this regard.
In April of this year, New York City will also require salary ranges for any position located within the city. Legislation regarding salary transparency is also being created in other states and municipalities as well.
Job Seekers Value Transparency
Millennials and Generation Z value corporations with ethical systems and practices more so than older generations. They require proof of these practices. Including salary bands in job postings is an effective way to provide proof that your company is ethical at the very beginning of a relationship with any potential employee.
The days of not discussing salaries are over. Not only do employees discuss them internally, but sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and others allow the public availability of this data.
Job seekers will find this data with or without you. Including this information upfront allows you to discuss this with candidates directly instead of allowing them to get their information from a 3rd party.
An Aligned Candidate Pool
Job seeking takes time. In today’s market, many sectors have more openings than people to fill them. Sharing salary ranges upfront ensures that your time is spent on candidates who align with your company as opposed to losing them because you were too busy going through the process with someone who withdrew at the end due to mismatched salary expectations.
A Step Toward Equity and Closing the Pay Gap
As previously discussed, pay is not inherently equitable. In order to change this, you’ll need equity and clarity in recruitment, qualification and interviewing, job titles and descriptions, performance management, advancement and promotions, and the list continues. It requires a lot of work over a lot of years, but do not get discouraged. We cannot expect HR folks to enact meaningful systems change in an instant. Including salary ranges in job descriptions is one step closer.
At Test Double, we continually iterate and improve so many of our systems. Three years in, and we’re in a much better state than when I started, but there’s still so much more to do. Sharing pay ranges upfront has enabled us to foster goodwill with candidates. It’s also served as a very important step toward improving equity in many of our systems. Speaking from experience, it’s worth it to your candidates, for your company’s bottom line, and to you as an equitable and inclusive HR professional.