Guidance

Increase transparency for pay, promotion and rewards

Published 4 March 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Purpose of this action

The aim of this action is to make sure all employees understand how to increase their pay or get a promotion, and how decisions are made. 

It also shows staff who set pay and rewards policies that they must follow clear rules. This creates accountability for their decisions.

You may want to choose this action if you have unequal rates of women and men:

• moving into senior roles
• staying with your organisation

It might also be useful if you have a gap in the number or level of bonuses between men and women.

Benefits and evidence

When you are open about pay, and how you make decisions on pay and promotion, employees have the information they need to progress. This can help them feel that your processes are fair.

In organisations with low transparency, people may not know how to get a pay rise or a promotion. Evidence suggests that women may be less likely to apply for roles if the selection rules are not clear.^{[footnote 1]} Women may also be less likely to negotiate their pay unless you make it clear that pay is negotiable. You may help to reduce pay inequalities when you are explicit about negotiations.^{[footnote 2]}

Without transparent policies, women may miss this information if they have less access to the informal networks where it may be shared.^{[footnote 3]} 

Being open about your processes creates accountability. Without this, bias may be more likely to affect your decisions.^{[footnote 4]} Transparency may also help you:^{[footnote 5]}

• improve your workplace culture
• build a reputation for fairness
• become an employer of choice

Implementing this action

In preparing to be transparent, your organisation should question and account for current pay setting, and how the value of a job has been determined. This could help you to identify and address unlawful pay discrimination, which also has an impact on your gender pay gap. 

To increase transparency, you can:

Identify which processes to clarify

Look at how you decide pay levels, promotions, salary reviews, and bonuses. This may include looking at how jobs are classified. You should also look at how you allocate learning and development.

Talk to your employees

Speak with a diverse range of employees to understand their experiences. You can involve them in creating or improving your policies.

You may also want to involve trade unions and their representatives in this process. 

Improve your policies

Review your current policies and how you share them to make eligibility and decision-making clearer. For example, you can:

• include pay information in job adverts
• state if pay, leave or development is negotiable
• make all internal promotion and transfer opportunities visible to everyone
• share how you make decisions about which pay band a job is in
• list the criteria and processes you use to make decisions for promotions, salary reviews and bonuses

You should aim to provide as much of this information as possible to applicants as well as employees. 

Remind employees about the rules

Tell employees about these policies before performance reviews and bonus awards. You should also mention these policies when you announce decisions on pay and promotions.

Hold managers accountable

Make sure managers know they are responsible for following these policies. You can give them regular feedback or link transparency to their own rewards. Provide a way for employees to raise concerns if they believe a process was not followed, and be transparent about how they are resolved.

You can read more about how to increase transparency of progression, pay and reward (Behavioural Insights Team)

Tracking progress

You might want to consider tracking the progress of this action by measuring the following metrics by sex – including the combination of sex and other characteristics (such as ethnicity or disability status) to highlight specific trends for different groups of men and women:

• the breakdown of those applying for a promotion, and successful candidates
• the breakdown of employees in senior roles
• the retention rate

You might also want to measure:

• internal reward and performance data to see if men and women doing similar work get similar rewards
• feedback from employees on their understanding of processes and policies to increase their pay or get a promotion, and how decisions are made
• feedback from employees on whether they think pay and reward decisions are fair

Where possible, you should compare any data you gather with ‘baseline’ data from previous years, and across demographic groups where appropriate.

Data privacy

Some or all of the equality information you collect is likely to be ‘special category personal data’, meaning it has special legal protections. 

Ensure that you are complying with the UK’s data protection legislation when you collect and analyse employees’ data.

Get advice and approval from your organisation’s privacy or data protection expert before you start.

1. Leibbrandt A and List JA (2014). Do women avoid salary negotiations? Evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment. Management Science, 61(9), 2016-2024. ↩

2. Leibbrandt A and List JA (2014). Do women avoid salary negotiations? Evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment. Management Science, 61(9), 2016-2024 ↩

3. The Behavioural Insights Team (2021). How to increase transparency of progression, pay and reward.  ↩

4. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩

5. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers. ↩