Say what you pay?

Purpose - Pay transparency is a promising topic both for research and practice. In particular, the new European directive on compensation transparency will increase its importance. However, research is still relatively sparse compared to other areas of HRM. In particular, state-of-the-art and use of pay information disclosure in job postings is neglected. This paper aims to shed light on this HRM topic.

Methodology - The paper summarizes the findings of a preliminary study conducted among German companies researching the proportion of firms offering compensation information in job postings and digging into the reasons behind it.

Findings - Only 17 % of the participating companies disclose meaningful information about compensation in their job postings. Doing so mainly depends on the company's attitude towards pay transparency. The age of the company has a minor negative influence, i.e.~older companies are less prone to disclose salary information. Industry, size, and existing overall pay transparency in the company do not determine if pay information is disclosed in job postings.

Research limitations - The main limitation of this survey is its small size of 88 participants and the snowball sampling approach employed. This limits its representativeness and calls for follow-up studies involving more companies and a wider variation of positions included.

Practical implications - While the EU directive will make it obligatory to communicate about pay before the first interview, some companies do it already. The study helps HR departments that think about changing their practice before it becomes compulsory to better judge the current standards.

Salary transparency

Human Resource Management

Job Posting

Pay Transparency

Personnel marketing

Study

Remuneration