Does Posting Salary Ranges in Job Descriptions Eliminate Bias?
Not if that’s the only thing you do
As it becomes more common to list salary ranges in job postings, you might wonder if doing so actually eliminates bias.
The short answer is that publishing salary ranges can help. Still, it should be part of a much broader talent management strategy built around transparency, checks and balances, and continuous improvement.
Creating a Strategy
Organizations should access benchmark compensation data relevant to their industry and location to inform their strategy. They should develop a compensation philosophy by thinking through the following questions:
- Do we compensate near the top of the industry range?
- Or do we compensate at a lower rate and rely on a great culture, strong brand, growth opportunities, or other strengths to attract talent?
This philosophy should be communicated to hiring managers and candidates. Organizations should periodically review their compensation strategy to ensure equitable talent attraction and retention outcomes. For example, relying too heavily on a strong mission may cause the talent pool to skew whiter and wealthier when not all qualified applicants can afford to live on the salaries offered.
Transparency
Organizations should create transparency in all hiring and salary decision. They must develop solid processes for writing job descriptions and predefine what kinds and how much experience are required for high, medium, and low-range salaries.
In recent years, organizations have expanded the definition of relevant experience to broaden their talent pools. This may mean identifying talented graduates who did not attend Ivy League universities, identifying transferrable skills from other industries, or allowing years of experience to substitute for educational requirements.
Checks and Balances
Organizations should split salary decisions between the manager, the HR business partner, and the recruiter to create checks and balances. Managers must justify (with data) why a particular hire falls within a specific salary range. This by no means eliminates bias, but it does reduce the most blatant excesses.
HR representatives need to have a solid grasp of biases, cultural differences, and equity for this system to work, especially those conducting salary negotiations with candidates. I know women in STEM who actually had the recruiter hang up on them when they took a strong negotiation stance.
Continuous Improvement
I’m a fan of doing after-action reviews to better understand when a negotiation unfairly rewards or punishes a candidate and using this information to improve the process. I’d also want data on how many times there was an exception to “bring in a really great hire” who is “an amazing culture fit.”
Too often, we prefer people who are similar to us, regardless of their qualifications. To reduce this bias, organizations must make intercultural competence part of ongoing leadership development for all hiring managers.
Organizations should monitor salaries and demographics throughout the employee lifecycle, not just during hiring. Salary equity audit data for each position and the demographics of people within them should feed into a dashboard that allows leaders to monitor trends. Employees should be able to see where their salary falls within their band.
The budget should be allocated to address salary disparities as they are discovered.
Final Thoughts
Although there’s no way to completely eliminate bias, building a compensation strategy and engaging in intercultural competence development work can go a long way in creating the results organizations want to see.
Kai Stowers is a consultant, Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and has a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology and Change Leadership from Columbia University. He partners with organizations to help leaders build high-performing, engaged, and inclusive teams. Learn more at kaistowers.com.
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