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With the EU Pay Transparency Directive bringing greater focus to openness and accountability, we recently hosted a session to take a closer look at what true fairness means in practice. The discussion brought our community together to reflect on how transparency influences trust, career progression, and workplace culture. Our panel explored both the opportunities and the tricky challenges, sharing practical insights to help us all grow together.
Pay transparency can sound deceptively simple: publish salary ranges, explain the pay bands, and let employees see how decisions are made. But the conversation during our session showed that genuine transparency goes much deeper. It touches the systems an organisation creates, the confidence of its managers, the quality of its data and, above all, whether employees feel able to ask difficult questions and receive honest answers.
Chair and Panel Moderator: André Lewis, Talent Acquisition Manager, GÉANT
Panel Participants: Nathalie Donnelly, Employee Support Coordinator (People Operations), Asiera; Lydia Samuel, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Jisc; and Andrew West, Reward & Benefits Consultant, Jisc.
How much transparency is enough?
The discussion opened with a practical question: how much information should an organisation share?
The answer was not “everything.” Employees need enough detail to understand that pay and grading decisions are being made through a structured, credible process. Examples can help bring that process to life, such as explaining why a tax specialist, business accountant, financial accountant and accounts payable professional may be benchmarked differently, without publishing every possible grading calculation.
Too little information leaves people feeling that decisions happen behind a curtain. Too much can create a framework that is confusing, unhelpful or open to reverse-engineering. The aim is therefore useful transparency: enough clarity for people to understand the logic, without overwhelming them with technical detail.
Start with something credible
One of the clearest messages was that an organisation must first have something it can confidently be transparent about.
That could be a detailed pay framework, but it could also begin with a simpler pay philosophy, a set of principles or a clearly documented approach. Employees should be able to find an answer to the question: “How does pay work around here?”
Clear policies on pay, benefits, progression and performance create that foundation. However, policies only build trust when they are followed consistently. When employees compare experiences, the written process and the decisions made in practice should tell the same story.
Transparency is a conversation
The panel repeatedly returned to employee voice. Publishing a policy or placing information on an intranet is not enough. Transparency requires two-way dialogue through managers, employee networks, forums and other listening channels.
People need space to ask why a decision was made, challenge something they believe is unfair or discuss what progression could look like for them. The organisation then has to demonstrate that it has listened.
That does not mean every request will result in change. Sometimes the answer will be no. But explaining why something cannot be changed is part of being transparent. Silence, inconsistency or unexplained decisions quickly weaken trust.
Managers make transparency real
Pay can be personal and emotionally charged. It may connect to someone’s sense of progress, recognition and professional value. Managers therefore need more than a copy of the pay policy. They need to understand the framework, communicate it clearly and hold sensitive conversations with fairness and confidence.
The panel encouraged managers to initiate conversations about career aspirations, development and progression through one-to-ones and performance reviews. Asking “What do you want your future to look like?” can create a safer opening than waiting for an employee to raise concerns after frustration has already built.
Psychological safety grows when employees can challenge respectfully and trust that doing so will not count against them.
Progression does not always mean regrading
Another important distinction was between the job and the person doing the job.
An employee may gain knowledge, improve their performance and contribute more strongly without the underlying role changing grade. Regrading is more likely when the role itself has evolved, for example through greater complexity, autonomy, decision-making responsibility, team size or breadth of work.
The conversation also acknowledged a difficult reality: someone can eventually reach the ceiling of a role. Further progression may require movement into a different position, either within the organisation or elsewhere. Being open about that can be uncomfortable, but it is more honest than implying that progression within the same role can continue indefinitely.
For some critical or high-volume professions, structured skills frameworks can make development routes clearer. However, building a bespoke framework for every role may be neither practical nor valuable, so organisations must decide where this investment will have the greatest effect.
What pay-gap figures do and do not tell us
The discussion then moved to gender pay-gap reporting. A headline percentage was described as a signal, not a diagnosis.
It can show that a difference exists, but it does not explain why. It does not automatically reveal whether people performing work of equal value are receiving equal pay. Workforce composition, seniority, occupational distribution, length of service and the wider employment sector can all affect the figure.
For that reason, achieving a zero pay gap should not be treated as the sole objective. A zero figure does not automatically prove that an organisation is equitable, just as a gap does not by itself prove unequal pay for equal work. The real value of the number lies in the questions it prompts: Who is represented in senior roles? Who has access to specialist opportunities? Who progresses, who leaves and what barriers may be influencing those outcomes?
Data shows the pattern; people provide the context
Numbers cannot explain the full employee experience. The panel emphasised the importance of combining workforce data with employee voice.
Intersectionality matters here. People may experience several overlapping barriers arising from their identity, circumstances or responsibilities. A single policy applied equally to everyone may not address those different realities. Equity requires organisations to understand where barriers differ and consider what support or change is needed.
Good analysis also depends on people feeling safe enough to share diversity information. A low disclosure rate leaves significant gaps, but chasing a target percentage is not enough. Employees need to know why the data is being collected, how it will be used and what action will follow. Trust is built gradually through openness, listening and visible change.
Transparency starts before someone joins
The closing discussion brought the issue into recruitment. Internal pay grades may mean something to existing employees, but very little to an external candidate. Job advertisements should therefore include a realistic salary range informed by both the external market and internal equity.
Publishing a range helps candidates decide whether an opportunity meets their needs and avoids wasting their time. Benefits, flexibility and working arrangements remain important parts of the overall offer, but they should complement clear salary information rather than replace it.
The lasting takeaway
The session made clear that pay transparency is not a one-off communication exercise. It is an ongoing relationship between policy, practice, data and dialogue.
The strongest organisations will not simply publish more information. They will create understandable frameworks, equip managers to explain them, invite employees to question them and remain accountable for what happens next. Transparency builds trust when people can see not only what decisions have been made, but how, why and what the organisation is prepared to do in response.
If you would like to contribute to shaping the EDI group by bringing your ideas for the next session, or would like to receive updates, please join the EDI Community mailing list.
