The EHRC wants to ban employers from asking prospective employees to disclose their salaries. We hear the case for and against in today’s Debate

YES: What you earned yesterday should not determine what you are worth today

What you earned yesterday should not determine what you are worth today.

I cannot think of a justifiable reason why someone’s previous pay would be relevant to a new employer. The employer is only learning what someone previously accepted, not an objective valuation of their skills or experience. 

This particularly harms women. Our earnings are already shaped by the gender pay gap, time out or reduced hours for caring, poor workplace practices and pay discrimination. Basing a new salary on what a woman was paid before means that inequality follows women from job to job. 

Employers are often reluctant to publish pay in job adverts, while expecting applicants to disclose what they earned before. Candidates are then asked to negotiate from that position – an unacceptable power imbalance.

Publishing salary information will help embed fair pay practices, but it does not remove the need for a ban of asking for previous salary information. If an advert carries a broad range, previous pay can still be used to push someone towards the bottom of that range. 

Employers should set pay according to the demands of the job, using criteria such as skills, experience and responsibility. If you think you’ve found the right person to take on that job, the salary offer should be based on that objective assessment. 

Banning employers from seeking salary information will not cost employers money. It will not require lengthy new strategies or plans. It is simply stopping doing something that cannot be justified or explained. 

Fair pay means walking into a new job knowing your salary has been set objectively, based on the skill and experience that the role demands. Asking for previous salary information undermines that principle. 

NO: A ban could punish those it’s designed to protect

I understand why the EHRC wants to ban the question that candidates tend to dislike. While it’s good that employers aren’t asking, it’s not beneficial for all employees. A ban won’t stop historical salary from shaping pay and could in fact punish those it’s most designed to protect.

Consider that under a ban, candidates can still choose to share their salary; in that scenario, candidates with a higher salary are far more likely to offer them up voluntarily. A study of US salary bans for example found that men are more likely than women to share their salary, possibly because they were more likely to be paid more. And that makes sense across the board; the higher you’re paid, the more likely you are to reveal it.

If you’re interviewing four people and three don’t volunteer their income then, it could be easy to assume they earn less and still lowball them. The ban in this instance doesn’t protect the lower-paid candidate, as it may be intended, rather it leaves them stuck on lower pay.

Plus, why do we need this when publishing a salary range in a job advert would address this? Candidates would know in advance the salary parameters and can negotiate within them. Not to mention the practical difficulties for the employer, who may go through the lengthy recruitment processes only to find that the offer is too low and lose the potential candidate. 

We should be reaching for more transparency on both sides of the equation, otherwise both sides will lose out. Openness and fair pay are where the conversations should be.

Scott Winter is co-founder of Agility EOR

THE VERDICT

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is urging ministers to go further in their current plans to make pay fairer, not only by forcing employers to publish salaries in job ads but also by banning them from requiring prospective employees to reveal their own salaries. It’s a worthy push that aims to redress the current power imbalance between employers and employees, but will it push the balance too far? Hiring is already an expensive and often laborious pursuit, so it certainly makes sense from an employer’s perspective to not want to overpay for a candidate; but then again, what is overpaying?

As Ms East argues, labour is ultimately worth what the employer values it at; salaries should therefore be calculated in accordance with the job description, rather than how low they think they can get away with offering a candidate. As Ms East also outlines, such transparency also entrenches pay gaps, allowing certain groups to remain underpaid in successive jobs. Requiring candidates to offer up their salaries also puts them in an awkward position whereby they may feel the need to strategically over-or-understate their pay. The verdict: don’t ask – it’s rude anyway!