REWARD
Balancing transparency by audience Candidates may see ranges, while employees see pathways and full disclosure around internal practices to determine pay. Training managers to talk about pay Managers should already know their teams, so help them with how to discuss pay with different audiences. Being iterative Ensure employees recognise that you’re listening, welcome feedback and have mechanisms in place to promote this. Being consistent and authentic Particularly if there’s an issue. Acknowledge and address it. Communicating, communicating, communicating Avoid seeing it as ‘one and done’, and instead embed pay transparency as a core value of your organisation. So, what do we do from here? For all the theory, there’s a harsh reality which must be faced to achieve pay transparency. It’s rare for any organisation
to be operating without some form of inequity across their workforce. The more mature and larger the organisation, the greater this inequity is likely to be. This means there are likely to be upfront costs involved to ensure employees are being paid in line with transparency frameworks. Rather than seeing this as a reason to stop, organisations should ask themselves why they embarked on the journey in the first place. Is the cost a reason enough to not proceed with their transparency goals? Or is achieving pay equity and transparency worth the investment? “Pay must be defined clearly and should be centred on total reward rather than salary alone” Pay must be defined clearly and should be centred on total reward rather than salary alone. Many organisations may decide to include bonus and benefits as part of the published total reward figures too. This helps to cater for all
employees, from those who work solely for financial reward, to those who value their pension, benefits, annual leave and so on. Demonstrating that they’re rewarded equally regardless of how that reward is delivered is important. There are practical challenges to implementing pay transparency, too. Data is key. Using the right data and ensuring it’s accurate and up to date is imperative. This means organisations always need access to a wealth of data and insight. And be warned, ‘going live’ while information is fragmented, takes days to integrate or requires approvals that may take weeks all adds significant risk to pay transparency success. Any pay transparency initiative must be supported by robust technology, operating models and processes to avoid being counterproductive. Pay transparency isn’t a number, it’s a company value which can significantly enhance the appeal of an organisation in the job market. Remember the multiple personas which are at play here: candidates are attracted to clarity and employees are retained by seeing their future in that clarity. n
Statutory Sick Pay changes webinar
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£75 for members
You’ll come away from this webinar: l understanding the new rules affecting statutory sick pay (SSP) l knowing when the changes are coming into force and the implications for payroll processes l knowing how to apply the new SSP rate calculation for lower earners l understanding the removal of the three waiting days.
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 116 | December 2025 - January 2026
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