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When a mid-sized Melbourne professional services firm first advertised a role with a salary range, their HR manager braced for awkward conversations with existing staff. What she didn’t expect was that the applications were significantly stronger, the time-to-hire dropped, and three current employees who had been quietly job-hunting came off the market because seeing the range confirmed they were being paid fairly.

Pay transparency is having a moment. Several Australian states have introduced or are considering legislation affecting how pay is discussed in workplaces, and the federal government has strengthened protections against pay secrecy clauses under recent Fair Work changes. Employees now have an explicit right to discuss their pay with colleagues if they choose, and employers cannot lawfully include clauses that prohibit this in employment contracts.

That doesn’t mean you’re required to publish salaries. But it does mean the question of how much transparency you want — and whether it’s working for you — is more pressing than it used to be.

 

The Case For Sharing Ranges

The strongest argument for pay transparency is trust. When employees don’t know whether they’re paid fairly relative to their colleagues and the market, they fill the uncertainty with assumptions — and those assumptions are often negative. Pay secrecy doesn’t prevent comparison; it just makes comparison less accurate and more anxiety-inducing.

Sharing ranges, particularly in job advertisements, also tends to improve application quality. Candidates self-select more accurately. You get fewer people who are fundamentally misaligned on compensation expectations, which saves everyone time.

For businesses with genuine gender or diversity pay gaps, transparency creates accountability. It’s harder to let gaps persist when they’re visible.

 

The Legitimate Concerns

There are real reasons why some businesses are cautious. If your pay structure has inconsistencies — people in similar roles earning different amounts for reasons that aren’t clearly defensible — transparency will surface that. That can create short-term tension.

In smaller businesses where every compensation decision is essentially an individual negotiation, publishing ranges can make every salary review a comparison exercise. Managing that requires more rigour and process than some SMEs currently have in place.

The practical middle ground for most small and medium businesses isn’t full public disclosure — it’s building a pay structure that you’d be comfortable defending, and then gradually increasing transparency as your confidence in that structure grows. Start by sharing ranges in job ads. Then work towards being able to explain to any employee how their pay was determined. Neither requires publishing everyone’s salary.

 

What Australian Requires

Under the Fair Work Act as updated through recent legislation, pay secrecy clauses in employment contracts are not enforceable. An employee cannot be disciplined or disadvantaged for disclosing or asking about their own pay. You can still ask employees to exercise discretion, but you cannot require it. Getting your contracts reviewed for legacy pay secrecy clauses is a practical step worth taking.

Pay transparency isn’t just a trend. It’s a direction the market and the legislation are both moving. Getting ahead of it now is considerably less disruptive than being caught on the back foot later.

Ready to build a better workplace? Book your free 30-minute consultation at  Blue Kite HR Consulting