"Competitive salary." Two words. Zero information. And, gently, on their way out.
The UK government has launched a 15-week consultation on requiring employers to include salary information in every job advert, as part of a wider set of equal pay reforms. If the proposals go ahead, and the direction of travel here is fairly obvious, the days of "competitive, DOE, negotiable, ask us when you get to interview" are numbered.
For most SMEs, this is manageable. But it is worth taking seriously now, rather than finding yourself doing it in a panic in 2027.
What the UK pay transparency consultation actually says
The Office for Equality and Opportunity has launched a consultation asking whether employers should be required to:
Include pay information in every job advert.
Provide it in writing before interview, where there is no advert.
Publish an exact salary, a salary range, or a benchmark rate. (This bit is still being decided.)
Include information about bonuses, benefits and other conditions.
The consultation closes at 5pm on 27 October 2026, and sits alongside the proposed Equality (Race and Disability) Bill. It builds on the equality action plans already introduced under the Employment Rights Act 2025.
If it goes through, it will be phased in gradually over several years. So there is time to get your house in order.
Why is the government doing this?
Pay discrimination is the stated reason. Equal pay complaints have averaged nearly 29,000 a year in England and Wales since 2008, making up around 12% of all employment tribunal claims. When pay is opaque, salary decisions can be quietly influenced by stereotypes, negotiation confidence, or what someone earned in their last role. Making salary visible before an application is a way of levelling the playing field, long before anyone gets near a tribunal.
The unstated reason: this is what most of Europe and much of the US is already doing. The EU Pay Transparency Directive had a transposition deadline of 7 June 2026, and most European countries are now working to implement it. Eighteen US states already require salary ranges on job listings. The UK, post-Brexit, has no obligation to align. It is quietly walking in the same direction anyway.
The rebel take on pay transparency
You should have been doing this anyway.
Hiding salary from applicants is a slightly manipulative bit of theatre we have all agreed to pretend is normal. It wastes their time. It wastes yours. It means the confident negotiator gets paid more than the equally brilliant candidate who assumed the offer was final. And it quietly loses you good hires who filtered you out because they could not tell whether you would be paying £28k or £48k.
Being upfront about pay is a values move first, a legal one second. When your values line up with the law, life gets significantly less stressful.
What UK SMEs should actually do about pay transparency, right now
This week, ideally over a cup of tea:
Audit your last five job adverts. How many had a salary on them? How many said "competitive"? Be honest with yourself.
Decide your pay philosophy. Are you paying market rate? Above? Below? Why? Write it down in a sentence you would say out loud to a candidate.
Benchmark your roles. You do not need a fancy report. A few well-chosen job boards and a chat with your network will get you 80% of the way there.
Agree your salary ranges internally. With hiring managers, in writing, before the next role goes out. This is the bit that stops nasty surprises at offer stage.
Sort your internal pay structure while you are at it. If publishing external salaries would embarrass you internally, that is a pay equity problem you needed to know about anyway.
One last thing
Pay transparency is coming to the UK. Maybe in 2027, maybe later, but it is on its way.
The employers who get ahead of it will find their recruitment gets easier, their applicants get better, and their team gets happier when they realise the whole thing was fairly designed all along.
The employers who wait until they are forced will find the whole process significantly more painful, and a lot more public.
So, when was the last time you posted a job with the actual salary on it?
If the answer is a bit wincy, you know where I am.
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