I seem to have a bit of a thing for animal metaphors at the moment.
And today, I want to talk about ostriches.
You probably know that the idea of ostriches burying their heads in the sand has no basis in scientific fact. Faced with danger or upheaval, ostriches don’t bury their heads. They run. Simple as that.
Sorry ostriches, but I’m going to borrow the metaphor anyway to talk about one of the more uncomfortable questions raised by pay transparency: what happens when the law itself limits what companies can disclose?
France offers a particularly interesting example. The pay transparency bill currently before Parliament includes a possible restriction on employees’ right to pay information in certain cases.
Under the current bill, an employer would not be allowed to provide the requested information where doing so could directly or indirectly reveal the pay of an identifiable colleague. This would apply in particular where the number of employees of either sex in the relevant category falls below a minimum threshold.
But what will that minimum be? Three employees? Five? Ten? For now, we don’t know. The threshold will be set by a further decree.
That’s where my ostriches come in: companies that, through fear or ignorance, may be tempted to treat this kind of restriction as a reason to do nothing and look the other way.
Transparency vs. confidentiality: where do you draw the line?
In France, then, the right to pay information will stop where the protection of individual privacy begins. But that wasn’t the only option.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive itself sets no minimum threshold for an employee’s right to pay information. And most countries that have already transposed the Directive, including Italy, Lithuania and Slovakia, have not introduced one either.
In fact, some countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, have gone even further, making it clear that the right to pay information should take precedence over confidentiality.
The French government has chosen a different route. And when details of the draft law first began to emerge, that decision quickly raised concerns.
Critics of the confidentiality threshold argue that it could encourage some companies to divide their workforce deliberately and artificially into smaller categories in order to avoid the information requirement and, above all, the consequences that come with it.
Those are my ostriches. Because yes, they do exist.
Facing the rising tide
My advice to companies tempted to take that route is simple: don’t.
Much like the behaviour unfairly attributed to a certain long-legged bird I’ll try not to mention again, you’re choosing to ignore the rising tide before us.
A legal restriction may prevent you from sharing certain information in a particular case. But that won’t make the underlying pressure for greater transparency go away. Today’s employees increasingly expect greater transparency and pay equity, regardless of what the law strictly requires.
This isn’t simply a legal issue. It’s a change in expectations.
Josh Bersin was making this point back in 2023: employees ultimately care much more about pay equity than they do about the absolute level of their pay. According to his research, policies built around equity and transparency can have 13 times more impact on employee retention than pay levels themselves.
That means even someone earning a good salary can quickly become demotivated and eventually disengaged, if they feel they’re being treated unfairly.
We often underestimate something very simple: transparent processes can be genuinely reassuring for employees.
Figures’ own YouGov study from early 2026 found a similar shift in expectations in France. Nine in ten French employees surveyed wanted greater pay transparency in their company, while 49% said they planned to exercise their right to pay information once the new rules came into force. And those intentions were even stronger among younger employees.
That’s why companies won’t be able to (and shouldn’t) hide behind a confidentiality threshold.
Finding the middle ground
You might ask, “But Virgile, what do you do for an employee whose category falls below the confidentiality threshold? How can you meet their need for transparency?”
The worst response would be to shut the conversation down.
You can’t simply say, “Nothing to see here, it’s not my fault, it’s the law. End of discussion.”
Because when that employee sees colleagues in larger categories exercising their right to pay information — and worse, actually getting answers — their own desire for transparency and equity could intensify. Faced with a closed door, a sense of unfairness takes root and the vicious cycle begins: disappointment, demotivation, disengagement.
The good news is that, even in these cases, you can still do something.
I often advise companies to create a specific process and response template for this type of situation.
For example, you could arrange a dedicated conversation with the employee where you share what information you can without compromising anyone else’s confidentiality. That might include:
- Where they sit within the salary range for their category
- The pattern of pay increases seen within that category over time
- How those increases were calculated
That gives the employee meaningful information without risking revealing the identity of individual colleagues.
Is this a reasonable middle ground?
Transparency without borders
I know I’m repeating myself, but the pressure for greater pay equity means companies will need to act even where the law doesn’t strictly require it.
And that rising tide is unlikely to stop at national borders. In fact, it’s already becoming an issue for companies with employees both inside and outside the EU.
Just as with categories that fall below a confidentiality threshold, you shouldn’t expect borders to hold back this shift.
As pay transparency takes hold across Western countries, employees across all subsidiaries will quickly expect to be treated the same way. And when different standards exist within the same group, they’ll expect the highest standard to apply to everyone. In this case, that means the EU standard.
Employees outside the EU may see their European colleagues benefiting from much greater transparency and faster progress on pay equity, while they are left behind. Within the same group, that kind of gap could be hard to accept.
In a world where information travels instantly, everyone can see when the grass is greener elsewhere. For multinational companies, a compensation strategy that changes fundamentally at every border is unlikely to hold together for long.
So don’t bury your head in the sand, even if our ostrich friends were never guilty of doing that in the first place. Doing so only creates a problem that will eventually come back to bite you.
To continue the conversation
Here’s some further reading on the wider impact of the EU Pay Transparency Directive. And if you’ve come across anything interesting yourself, feel free to send it my way.
This article adds another useful angle to the question of what the Directive means for multinationals operating both inside and outside the EU. HR Executive points to US, Canadian and Australian companies with European subsidiaries that are beginning to align their compensation practices with European standards. Who said Europe had lost its influence? There’s a good chance the European approach to pay transparency will become a de facto global standard, simply because maintaining different systems across different countries is expensive and difficult. That said, some markets may resist for deeper cultural reasons. The article points to South Korea, for example, where salary secrecy appears much more deeply entrenched.
Summarize this article with AI
No time to read it all? Get a clear, structured, and actionable summary in one click.
