Emboldened by a strong labor market, employees find themselves in the driver's seat these days when it comes to demanding pay transparency. And with a growing list of jurisdictions now requiring employers to share compensation information, this trend shows no signs of slowing down.

In this post we will address the rules surrounding pay transparency across the country and workers’ growing demand for it. We will also discuss employer pros and cons, as well as strategies to implement pay transparency practices in an organization.

WHAT IS PAY TRANSPARENCY?

Pay transparency is when an employer openly communicates pay-related information through established practices to current or prospective employees. Employers can provide this information through various channels, such as online job sites, job postings, or during an interview.

Companies across the U.S. are chasing a Monday deadline to provide the federal government with full disclosures of how they compensate workers of all genders, races and ethnicities. The data collection exercise, the largest and most detailed ever, is part of an effort by the government to close gaps in earnings.

Subject to the requirement are the more than 70,000 private U.S. companies with more than 100 workers. Collectively these companies employ more than 54 million American workers. These firms must submit their compensation information to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by September 30th.

This deadline comes almost two years after the rule, issued under the Obama administration, was originally scheduled to go into effect. In 2017 the Trump administration pumped the breaks on the rollout of the new rule, arguing that the collection and aggregation of such in-depth salary information was a burden on companies. (Advocacy groups sued the EEOC to get the pay-reporting requirement reinstated.)

EEOC officials say that this detailed compensation data, which will span virtually every industry and region of the county, will help them quickly ascertain which discrimination complaints deserve closer scrutiny, from the tens of thousands that are filed with the EEOC annually. (They received over 75,000 in 2018 alone.)