One company comes up again and again in conversations about pay transparency: Buffer. That’s because, in 2013, the social media scheduling company made the somewhat radical decision to publicly share its salary formula and individual salaries.
At Figures, we know this type of extreme transparency pretty well. Our salaries are not currently published online, but they have been visible internally to all employees for most of the company’s history.
That said, we’d argue that companies like Buffer and Figures are special cases, and shouldn’t become the benchmark for most organisations. For many companies, full salary visibility could actually do more harm than good.
Instead of treating this as the end goal, most employers should focus first on meeting their legal obligations, especially under the EU Pay Transparency Directive. They can then choose to go beyond these obligations, but thoughtfully, in a way that’s right for them. Keep reading to learn what that might look like for your organisation.
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Why full pay transparency is not the right benchmark for most organisations
When we talk about “full pay transparency”, we usually mean that a company makes actual salaries visible to employees, and sometimes to external audiences too. This may be combined with transparent salary formulas, bands or compensation policies.
For example, Figures is highly transparent internally: every one of our employees has access to everyone else’s salary. This has been important to us from the beginning, and it makes sense given what we do. Put simply, we couldn’t publicly preach transparency if we weren’t willing to walk the walk ourselves.
Still, this isn’t an approach we advise every company to copy. In fact, it’s probably not the right choice for most organisations, for a few reasons:
- Employees may feel uncomfortable: Some employees may not want their own salary to be visible. Others may find it difficult to know exactly what their colleagues earn.
- Legacy decisions may be harder to explain: If pay decisions were made before the company had a clear compensation structure, full visibility can expose historical inconsistencies.
- International pay differences may need more context: In global companies, employees may see very different salaries for similar roles without understanding the local market logic behind them.
- Weak or informal systems become more visible: If salary bands, progression criteria or review processes are unclear, transparency can create more questions than the company is ready to answer.
The point isn’t that full pay transparency is “bad”. If it genuinely fits your company culture, and your internal systems and processes are solid, go for it. But for most companies, it’s not the right destination — and treating it as the gold standard can get in the way of genuine progress.
The real goal: transparency around how pay works
Rather than looking to share every salary with everyone, the goal for most companies should be making the mechanisms behind pay more visible. That might mean sharing information about:
- Where someone sits in their salary band
- What the salary band means
- How progression works
- How raises are decided
- How promotions impact pay
- Which criteria are used for pay-setting
- How exceptions are handled
Sharing this type of information can build trust with employees by helping them understand the logic behind their pay — as long as that logic is credible and consistent.
Finding the right level of pay transparency
The right level of transparency is different for every organisation. You shouldn't think of it as a single yes/no decision, but a series of choices about what employees, candidates and managers need to see.
Employers looking to increase transparency should first check what their legal obligations are to make sure they’re compliant. This is especially important in 2026, as a new EU Directive has just come into play and introduced new obligations for employers.
Once you know you’re compliant, you can start exploring where you may want to go further based on your company culture, structure and what matters most to your employees.
What the law says: EU pay transparency obligations in 2026
The EU Pay Transparency Directive sets a new baseline for pay transparency across the EU. Exact obligations vary by country, especially where national transposition is still incomplete. But broadly speaking, the Directive requires employers to provide more visibility in the following areas:
- Pay transparency for job candidates: Candidates must be informed about the starting pay or pay range for a role, either in the job advert or before the interview stage.
- Employee rights to pay information: Employees can request information about their own pay and average pay levels for workers doing the same work or work of equal value, broken down by sex.
- Pay-setting and progression criteria: Employers need clear, gender-neutral criteria for pay, pay levels and pay progression, and must make these available to employees.
- Gender pay gap reporting: Employers above certain size thresholds must report regularly on gender pay gaps.
- Joint pay assessments: Employers may need to work with workers’ representatives on a joint pay assessment where pay reporting shows a relevant gender pay gap of at least 5% that cannot be justified or corrected.
The Directive also introduces a ban on asking candidates about their salary history, and gives employees stronger rights in equal pay disputes.
Want to know what the law says about pay transparency in your country? Head to our full EU Pay Transparency Directive implementation tracker.
Beyond compliance: where employers can go further
For many organisations, compliance with the relevant pay transparency laws is enough. Whether you decide to go further depends on factors like:
- Company culture: More open organisations may find it easier to introduce additional transparency than those with a more formal or hierarchical culture.
- Compensation maturity: The clearer your salary bands, criteria and review processes are, the easier it is to decide what you can make visible.
- Manager readiness: Managers need to understand the company’s approach well enough to explain pay decisions clearly and consistently.
- Employee expectations: Some teams may actively want more visibility into pay decisions, while others may find too much information distracting or uncomfortable.
So, what might greater transparency look like in practice? The table below is not an exhaustive list of every way you could become more transparent. However, it provides some options for going beyond legal compliance in certain key areas.
Transparency only works if pay is explainable
Here’s the thing: pay transparency can’t fix a weak compensation system. If anything, it can put more pressure on the parts of your compensation system that are hardest to explain. When employers push a level of transparency that they’re not ready for, it can mean:
- HR are faced with questions they can’t answer
- Managers fail to adequately explain pay decisions
- Salary bands raise more questions than they answer
- Exceptions look arbitrary or unfair
- Legacy decisions become visible
That’s why we’d always advise companies to focus on the systems and structure behind compensation before adding more transparency into the mix. Transparency is much more likely to work when salary bands are consistent, pay criteria are objective, compensation reviews are structured and pay equity analysis is already part of how the company manages pay.
Pay transparency readiness checklist
Before you go further, check if you can explain…
- Your salary bands: How they are built, who they apply to, and how employees move through them.
- Your pay criteria: What factors influence salary, raises, promotions and progression.
- Your compensation review process: When decisions are made, who is involved, and how budgets are applied.
- Your exceptions and outliers: Why someone sits outside the usual range, process or increase logic.
- Your market positioning: How benchmark data informs pay ranges, offers and adjustments.
- Your internal equity logic: How you compare similar roles or work of equal value.
- Your manager guidance: What managers should say when employees ask pay questions.
Start by building a pay structure you can defend
For most companies, the first step towards more useful pay transparency isn’t necessarily sharing more pay information. It’s doing the behind-the-scenes work to make sure additional transparency doesn’t create more problems than it solves.
That means building salary bands, clarifying pay criteria, documenting review processes, checking pay equity and making sure managers can explain decisions consistently.
Figures helps companies put those foundations in place, from salary benchmarking and salary bands to compensation reviews, pay equity analysis and pay transparency readiness. So when you do decide to make more pay information visible, you’ll know it’s built on a system that you can stand behind.
![How Countries Are Implementing the EU Pay Transparency Directive [Updated June 2026]](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/67d7e1e2f12d2942bb8d0309/6a14c0c5ccb3b19bd6d550eb_Frame.png)
