If you’ve been following along in my pay transparency series, you know there’s a whole boat load of new states joining the list of those that require salary ranges on job posts. If you missed that one, you can read it here.
Today, in my final edition of this series, I want to talk about the pay transparency aftermath. There are unintended consequences of pay transparency, especially when there are pay discrepancies. The moment when those salary ranges go live and things get awkward at the office because people start to realize they’re under paid - either by seeing your postings or your competitors.
People talk. We always talk about money eventually - even if it’s an accident. Hell, that’s how I found out about pay discrepancies in the early 2000s when a law like this seemed unimaginable. We have come a long way - and I’m all for the good intent of these laws. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to do damage control as this new piece of information rolls out.
How Do I Explain Pay Discrepancies Without Causing Resentment?
Step one is to expect people to be resentful. Unless you are the top paying team of the entire state, you should expect people to want to use this information for negotiations. While some companies act like that’s some big inconvenience, just a reminder: that makes people smart. It is smart to use information available to negotiate better circumstances for your life.
That means you need to be prepared to do a few things. First, you have to adjust pay discrepancies where they are way out of whack. If you post a pay range and someone already working for you is making less than the bottom number, you better already have adjusted payroll. If you’re anticipating a pay transparency law in 2026, you start this work in June 2025. If your law just rolled out and you missed this step? Get to work now.
You should also do a pay analysis. Is anyone wildly under-paid for their expertise? When researching salary, free tools like Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary Insights, or Levels.fyi can help by validating the accuracy of the job title and the location you’re hiring for. Salaries can vary widely based on location. Then, compare data across at least 2 platforms to identify patterns and validate the accuracy of the ranges provided. If you have a budget, paid tools like Payscale or Salary.com Employer Solutions offer detailed benchmarking reports tailored to the industry and role.
How Job Posts Help With Pay Transparency
Job posts are a tool for avoiding the unintended consequences of salary transparency and getting it right. You already know it’s a conversion tool (all the data here), but a job postings shelf life doesn’t have to end at the hire. If you work in one of the states where pay transparency just became law, now is the time to have everyone in the company rewrite their job posts.
Start by hiring an expert to run a job post workshop (yes, me. Call me for job post training). In that workshop, I would teach people how to write their own job post. You as the recruiting team can do the editing but next time you have to hire, I would bet you have something far better than ChatGPT is going to generate from some over simplified and under informed “write me a job post” prompt.
Then, show employees how to translate those mandatory requirements into goals. I love this because it creates a benchmark of transparency for those ever evolving roles where new goals and projects slowly get added over time. At some point you have to say “this job changed a lot, when does pay change?” but often we don’t have the data to prove that.
Creating More Equitable Pay
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and it empowers your team to take action on salary transparency - not just posting it on jobs, but the strategy of making transparency do what we intended: create more equitable pay. We can do something here if we really take the time to do it well, not just check the box with some obnoxious range. 0 is not a bottom pay range. No one should work for $0.
I’d love it if you took the time to send me a message or post a comment to tell me what you thought of this new series. If you want to support me in a financial way, buy me a coffee.
Looking to upgrade those job posts for pay transparency and getting a higher qualified candidate conversion rate? Book a meeting. I can train your team to DIY or have my team take over and do the job post overhaul for you.
Thanks for reading! Our next series kicks off on February 25th, focusing on a practical guide to transitioning from DEI to merit-based hiring. We’ll break down the Executive Order and develop a strategy that not only meets but exceeds the new guidelines—while ensuring equity, diversity, and inclusion remain at the core of the process.
Meet My Series Sponsor
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Other Posts In This Series:
