Salary transparency in hiring changes 3 things immediately.
Fewer people apply. The ones who do are better matched.
And someone already on your team does the arithmetic.
That third one is why most companies do not publish.
Audit what you pay before you publish anything. The band exposes gaps that already existed.
What does not publishing actually cost?
Pay ends up correlated with negotiation confidence rather than contribution.
2 engineers join the same team in the same quarter, at the same level.
One negotiated, one did not. The gap is 12,000 euro.
It compounds through every raise after that.
Nobody decided it. It is the default outcome of a private price.
The bill arrives later. Salary information leaks, because people talk. When it does, what you have to explain is an accident.
What actually changes when you publish?
Application volume drops, which reads as bad and is usually good.
Negotiation gets shorter. The question stops being “what can I extract”.
It becomes “where in the band do I land, and why”.
And your existing team compares the published band to their own pay.
That finds a problem which already existed.
Application volume drops. The people who filter themselves out were going to reject your offer anyway. After your engineers spent hours on them.
Negotiation gets shorter. A conversation about evidence is a better conversation than a conversation about extraction.
Your existing team checks. If the answer is uncomfortable, you have found a problem that was already there.
What do you do before you publish anything?
Audit what you currently pay.
Are 2 people at the same level 15% apart for no defensible reason?
Fix that before the band goes public. Publishing first turns a quiet problem into a loud one.
This step is the actual work. Writing the number into the job ad takes 5 minutes.
How do you write the band?
Make it real and attach the level. A range of 60,000 to 120,000 euro is a refusal wearing a costume.
Publish the range for the level you are hiring at.
Say what moves someone within it. Scope, autonomy, the specific skills the team is short of.
Senior Engineer, 85,000 to 100,000.
That tells a candidate more than either half alone.
What do you say when someone asks for the top of the band?
Answer with the criteria rather than with a yes or no.
“The top of the band is for someone already operating at the next level.”
“Here is what that looks like on this team. From what I have seen, you are here.”
That is defensible and it survives being repeated to a colleague.
The objection that is actually valid
Publishing bands makes you easier to poach from.
A competitor now knows what to beat. That is real and it is the cost.
People who leave for money alone are usually leaving for other reasons too.
You would rather find that out early.
Where this is going anyway
The EU Pay Transparency Directive lands in national law by June 2026.
Employers must give pay-range information before the interview.
And they cannot ask about salary history.
You will be doing this. The choice left is whether you do it on your own schedule.
With your own numbers cleaned up first.
Common questions
Does publishing a salary range reduce the number of applications?
Yes, and the drop is mostly people who would have rejected your offer anyway. After your engineers spent hours on them. Volume is the wrong metric. Track offers accepted per engineering hour spent instead. The published band usually looks better on that number.
What if your current pay is not defensible?
Fix it before you publish. Budget for the correction rather than the announcement. A band published over unaddressed gaps hands your team the evidence and no explanation. Most companies find 1 or 2 real anomalies. Plus a handful with defensible reasons nobody had written down.
Is salary transparency becoming mandatory in the EU?
The EU Pay Transparency Directive lands in national law by June 2026. Employers must give pay-range information to candidates before the interview. They cannot ask about salary history. The only choice left is your own schedule. Publish once your own numbers are clean.
Does publishing bands make you easier to poach from?
Yes, and that is the real cost. A competitor now knows what to beat. The counter: people who leave for money alone are usually leaving for other reasons too. A published band means you find that out while they are still on the team.
The short version
Fix your internal pay gaps, then publish a real band with the level attached.
Fewer applications, better matched, shorter negotiations.
Your team will do the arithmetic either way. Better that the answer is defensible.
Rather not run the audit alone? That is what SmartHiring does.
Process audit at 500 euro.