What Is Pay Transparency? And Why Do We Need It?

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years over the topic of pay transparency. But that’s the thing: it’s largely been a lot of talk, and very little action. We will touch on the baby steps that have been taken to date in this area in another article, but, for now, let’s focus on what pay transparency is, and why we need and deserve it!

So, what is pay transparency? There are a number of similar definitions you could find online by running a simple Google search, but here at Clear-Salary.com, we think the definition itself is pretty . . . well, transparent from it’s name—that is, it is being transparent or “clear” about what employees at your organization are being paid. There are a lot of different ways to achieve this goal: (1) employers can proactively offer up this information to its employees and/or prospects; (2) it can be mandated through laws as we’ve seen done in some locations; or (3) employees could simply take action themselves and start their own dialogue. Given how slow organizations and legislatures have been to take effective action, Option No. 3 is what we seek to do here at Clear-Salary.com. Our goal is to provide a platform for employees to engage anonymously amongst themselves within their own organizations and industries to make pay practices more transparent—and, importantly, FAIR—to all.

Which leads us to our next point: why do we need it? Experts overwhelmingly agree that increasing pay transparency will help close the stubborn gender and racial pay gap that has existed for well, forever! But it also has other very helpful impacts, including helping to increase organizational trust, improve culture, and allow everyone to have the same opportunities to negotiate and receive fair pay. And with the state of our economy and current increasing inflation, pay is certainly top of mind for many!

So, let’s do this together. Let’s create our own pay transparency community here to help change the tide in favor of employees and fair pay!