As legislation rolls out gradually around the country — and the world — most human resources professionals expect pay transparency and pay equity to increase in importance or remain of equal importance to companies’ branding strategies, according to the results of HR Dive’s 2025 Identity of HR survey.
But there’s been a subtle shift.
While half of the 578 HR pros surveyed earlier this year expect no change in employers’ approaches, the share who predicted pay transparency and pay equity would increase in importance in the next three to five years dropped from 60% in last year’s survey to 41% this year. Meanwhile, those who foresee the efforts losing importance over the same time period grew from 4.5% last year to 9% this year.
Pay transparency, pay equity and compensation's role in branding expected to drop in importance
Breanne Martell, a shareholder at Littler, offers a possible explanation.
“It's not really a branding issue, because everybody's going to be doing it; it's just going to be the standard business practice. I don't think that suggests that it will be less important; it's just now part of this whole tapestry of what the expectation is for businesses,” Martell said.
Martell expects that all companies eventually will disclose pay and benefits information in their job postings in the U.S. — as well as Europe, thanks to the European Union’s Pay Transparency Directive — making disclosure less of a competitive advantage.
Katie Stukowski, vice president of solutions consulting at Salary.com, doesn’t quite think that transition is underway yet, however.
“I think in some cases it may be, but I don't think we're there yet,” Stukowski said.
Rather, she attributes the shift to companies’ worries over how comfortable they are with their pay transparency efforts and compliance requirements.
“Part of that can be a reason why they might push other marketing objectives for their organization,” Stukowski said. Employers may not have the right processes and procedures in place to invite the conversation, she said.
Getting pay transparency and equity right can require extensive effort and involves a clear understanding and strategy for how people are paid, promoted and rewarded within the organization, she said; plus, there are a patchwork of laws and regulations across the country — and the world.
“It's not just one defined federal obligation for all organizations,” Stukowski said, which means employers must choose to either comply with each mandate individually or try to model their approaches to meet the most aggressive laws.
“These are really challenging laws to comply with. There are a lot of compliance considerations. It's sensitive information, and there's a very, very heavy administrative burden in terms of actually complying with it,” said Theresa Kelly, a partner at Day Pitney. “The laws are going to keep coming, and we're going to see more and more at the state and local level.”
Marketing efforts also change periodically, Stukowski said.
“There are new buzzwords that people every year spin up and think about when it comes to, ‘how are we marketing ourselves as an organization?’” Stukowski said. “Sometimes with the marketing, the terms might switch,” but companies generally are still trying to accomplish the same things and have the right processes in place.
Even though the verbiage might change, the actual necessity of pay transparency strategies aren’t going away, she said.
