We Are Distributed is a UK-registered global career platform for remote workers. Pay transparency is foundational to what we do. We strongly support the proposal to require pay information in job adverts and urge the government to go further: every publicly advertised role open to people in Great Britain should carry a genuine, reasonably narrow salary range, wherever the advert appears and whoever the employer is.
Voluntary practice has not delivered; regulation does. Our answers focus most heavily on pay transparency and enforcement, where our evidence is strongest, and set out a remote-work perspective on every chapter.
The consultation says most employers already publish pay ranges voluntarily. Our live data says otherwise for Great Britain.
The gap tracks the law, not employer goodwill: transparency is highest where US state laws require it. Counts are from employer ATS feeds and advert text matched by named location, so they slightly undercount ranges hidden in unusual formats. Many of the employers behind UK-named roles have no UK company: they are international employers hiring UK-based people through an employer of record (EOR). That is why the advert duty has to follow the role, not the employer's address.
Pay opacity at the point of hire is where many pay gaps start, and it is the cheapest point to fix them. When pay is hidden, the candidate who negotiates hardest, or who already earns most, gets more. That systematically disadvantages women, ethnic minority and disabled candidates, and anyone returning from a career break.
It also hits livelihoods directly. Without a range, a job seeker can't tell whether a role pays enough to cover their rent and bills until they are deep into the process. They have to decide whether to invest hours in an application that may pay below what they need to live on, and many learn the pay only at offer stage, when walking away costs them weeks.
Voluntary practice has not solved this. On our job board, only 13% of the 3,029 live roles naming the UK publish a salary range, against 42% of US-named roles, where many states require it. We do not recognise the claim that most employers already publish ranges voluntarily.
The proposal should be strengthened in four ways. First, it must apply to every public advert for a GB role, including careers pages, job boards, social media and recruitment agency adverts, not just the employer's own advert. Second, it should apply to internal vacancies and promotions. Third, the "in writing before interview" route should be the exception, for roles genuinely filled without an advert, and the information must arrive before the first screening call, not the final interview. Fourth, it must cover overseas employers advertising roles that can be done from GB. Many employers advertising UK roles on our board have no UK company and hire through an employer of record (EOR); if the duty only bites on UK-registered employers, a large share of UK adverts will escape it.
The mandatory core should be short so every employer can comply on day one:
Recommended but not mandatory: employer pension contribution above the statutory minimum, equity eligibility, and whether pay is set by a collective agreement or published pay scale. Annual adjustment policies are better covered by guidance than by the advert.
A salary range with both a minimum and a maximum, or a single fixed salary. A benchmark rate alone is not enough because it tells the candidate nothing about this job.
Regulations should cap the width of the range. We propose the top of the range be no more than 30% above the bottom. That is not arbitrary: across 6,110 published ranges in our data, the median top-to-bottom spread is 1.28x. Ontario has capped advertised ranges at a CAD 50,000 spread since 1 January 2026 for roles paying up to CAD 200,000, showing a cap is workable. Very wide ranges, such as £30,000 to £90,000, comply on paper and defeat the purpose.
The range must be given in good faith: what the employer genuinely expects to pay. An offer outside the advertised range should need a documented, objective reason that the employer would have to produce if challenged. "Competitive", "depending on experience", "up to £X" and "from £X" should not comply. Multi-grade public pay scales can meet the duty by publishing the grade and the scale.
One audit ordered since 2014 shows the exceptions have swallowed the rule. A proven breach is the strongest evidence that pay structures need checking. Keeping only the "audit in the last three years" exception is fair and targeted. We would add that audit findings and the action plan should be shared with affected staff, so the audit leads to change rather than a document in a drawer.
An audit built on a biased or missing grading structure cannot find the problem it is meant to find. A job evaluation scheme also makes advertised ranges more defensible, because employers who have evaluated roles can set bands consistently. It should come with proportionate guidance and a reasonable deadline for smaller employers, and use simple published methodologies rather than requiring expensive consultants.
The biggest barrier for a worker who suspects unequal pay is that they cannot see what colleagues earn. A questionnaire with adverse inferences for evasive answers resolves many cases before tribunal and filters out weak ones. Pay-only scope keeps it targeted. It also works well alongside advertised ranges: a worker can compare their pay with the range the employer itself published for the same role.
A short standard digital form on GOV.UK, a fixed 28-day reply period, and a standard template for employer answers. Comparator pay can be given as anonymised ranges where there are confidentiality concerns. Guidance should list what is out of scope so employers are not burdened. Employers that publish ranges and keep a job evaluation scheme will find it quick to answer, which rewards good practice.
They will set pay bands before advertising rather than after meeting a candidate. Many will introduce or tidy up levelling frameworks, align pay for people in the same role, and train hiring managers on pay conversations. Recruitment will speed up because candidates whose expectations don't fit will self-select out. We expect some employers to correct existing internal gaps once new hires' ranges become visible to current staff, which is the intended effect.
For the advert duty, the cost is low: deciding a range before advertising, which a well-run employer already does. Most applicant tracking systems already have a salary range field. The real cost is uplift where existing staff are found to be underpaid relative to advertised ranges. That is not a cost of the law; it is the cost of existing underpayment becoming visible. Audits and job evaluation only fall on employers found in breach.
No for the advert duty.
The advert duty needs about 6 months' notice: employers need to set ranges for open roles and update templates. Larger employers without any grading structure may take longer to build a full framework, but they can still publish a good-faith range in the meantime. Ordered job evaluation schemes may take 6 to 12 months for large employers. The advert duty should not wait for the tribunal procedure reviews; it doesn't depend on them.
The replacement statutory code should state plainly which factors cannot, on their own, justify a pay difference, and what evidence an employer needs for the factors that can. In particular:
Remote work makes location the fastest-growing grey area. On our platform we see employers paying two people in the same remote role very differently because of where they live, often with no written policy and no disclosure. Location can be a legitimate factor, but only if it is a transparent rule rather than a case-by-case negotiation. Example for the guidance: two remote product marketers on the same level, one in Leeds and one in London. A written policy with a published London weighting, applied to everyone, is a defensible material factor. A one-off higher offer to the London hire because "he asked for more" is not.
The code should also include worked examples for each defence, a simple checklist employers can follow, and say that a published, good-faith salary range that both people were hired within is strong evidence of fair pay setting.
Other, please specify: the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with the job-advert transparency duty enforced by the Fair Work Agency under a formal joint-working agreement.
The two jobs are different. Investigating pay discrimination, ordering audits and running inquiries is discrimination-law casework, where EHRC has the legal expertise and covers the whole Equality Act. Checking that tens of thousands of job adverts carry a compliant range is high-volume, inspection-led compliance, much closer to what the Fair Work Agency already does for the minimum wage and employment agency standards. Advert breaches should be handled with quick notices and fixed penalties, not discrimination investigations. A new standalone body would spend scarce money on set-up. Whichever home is chosen, the Unit needs ring-fenced funding and published annual enforcement targets; EHRC has run only one equal pay investigation, and a new home without new resources will not change that.
This is the single most useful power proposed. Most issues can be settled by looking at pay data early, without a costly formal investigation. Other regulators such as the Health and Safety Executive already work this way. Safeguards: a written request stating the concern, a proportionate scope, a reasonable deadline, and data handled confidentially.
Without these tools, it is often impossible to tell whether pay is discriminatory, which means employers with the least structured pay are hardest to investigate. That rewards opacity. The existing investigation safeguards (reasonable suspicion, representations on scope, 28 days to respond to draft findings) are enough to prevent misuse.
Recommendations nobody has to respond to have little effect. A duty to respond and report progress at set intervals costs a responsible employer little and makes accountability public. Responses should be published.
Employers will keep better pay records, set bands before hiring, and document the reasons for pay decisions at the time. Knowing a regulator can ask for data early encourages self-audit. Employers with good practice will notice little change.
Modest record-keeping costs for most. Employers subject to investigation face audit and job evaluation costs, but only where there is reasonable suspicion of discrimination. Overall costs should fall, because early resolution replaces years of tribunal litigation.
No for most employers.
The Unit itself may take 12 to 18 months to set up and staff. For employers, responding to disclosure requests is immediate once in force. An audit or job evaluation required during an investigation may take 6 to 12 months for a large employer.
Set a published service standard for the Unit, such as early resolution within six months. Fund free advice for small employers so compliance doesn't depend on paying lawyers. Report annually on advert compliance by sector, using job-board data. And let individuals bring a simple, low-cost claim for a non-compliant advert alongside Unit enforcement, so the duty has teeth from day one.
It is indefensible that a worker's legal protection against unequal pay depends on which protected characteristic is involved. Levelling up both regimes, rather than copying the sex equal pay scheme across unchanged, is sensible given the problems with that scheme. But Phase 2 has no date. "Once the system is improved" can mean never. The government should set a target commencement date for Phase 2 now, with a review point, so ethnic minority and disabled workers are not left waiting indefinitely. Transparency measures from Phase 1, including salary ranges in adverts, help every group immediately and should not wait.
A remedy that pays compensation but leaves the discriminatory term in place means the discrimination continues the day after the hearing. Contract modification fixes the cause. It is already how the sex equal pay scheme works.
Modification should apply only to terms the tribunal has found discriminatory, and only where a comparable term (or a missing one) can be identified. The tribunal should state the corrected term precisely. Employers should have a set period to implement it. There should be no automatic knock-on to other staff without separate findings, though the employer should be required to review others in the same role.
A finding of race or disability pay discrimination is just as strong a signal of wider problems as a sex finding. Consistency across characteristics also makes compliance simpler for employers: one audit method, applied to all three.
Undervaluation of work typically done by particular groups is one of the main causes of pay gaps. Without equal value claims, ethnic minority and disabled workers concentrated in certain roles cannot challenge that undervaluation at all. Better upfront job evaluation, which this consultation encourages, will keep the number of contested equal value cases down.
Both scenarios describe common, real situations: a woman replaced by a man on higher pay, and an employer quietly raising a woman's pay after hiring a man above her. Today the first person often has no claim at all. Both scenarios use a real person, so tribunals have a concrete benchmark.
Pay discrimination is often hidden, and people only learn about it later, sometimes after leaving. A fixed six-month limit with no discretion punishes those who had no way of knowing. The same test already works for other discrimination claims. Greater pay transparency will reduce the number of late discoveries over time.
More employers will run voluntary audits covering ethnicity and disability, collect better diversity data, and evaluate roles before setting pay. Recruitment will lean more on published ranges and structured pay decisions, which is what the advert duty encourages anyway.
Data collection, audit and job evaluation costs for employers that don't already do these, and back pay where discrimination is found. The latter is not a new cost but existing underpayment being corrected. Keeping existing compensation limits and not applying the changes retrospectively already limits exposure.
Yes, for some employers.
Building reliable ethnicity and disability data may take 12 to 24 months for larger employers. That is a reason to start Phase 2 preparations now, alongside Phase 1, not to delay the duty itself.
Set a firm Phase 2 commencement date. Make ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting mandatory for larger employers. Include pay for disabled workers on reasonable adjustments, such as reduced hours, in guidance so adjustments never become a route to lower hourly pay.
Outsourcing should not be a route around equal pay. Remote and distributed work has multiplied the ways labour is supplied: employers of record, contractor-of-record platforms, umbrella companies, agencies and staffing partners. In our advisory work helping employers choose global employment partners, we see the same role done side by side by a direct employee and someone engaged through an intermediary, on different terms, with no one responsible for checking. A shared duty puts responsibility where the decisions are made. The definition of outsourcing must explicitly include employer-of-record and contractor-of-record arrangements, or remote hiring will become the new gap.
Outsourced workers often cannot see the contracts that set their pay, so expecting them to enforce the duty alone would not work. A regulator can request data across the whole chain. But the Unit should not be the only route: see Q64.
If only the direct employer is liable, principals can push costs down the chain and claim ignorance. If only the principal is liable, intermediaries have no reason to change. Shared, proportionate responsibility closes both routes. Reasonable steps scale with each party's size and leverage, so a small intermediary is not held to the same standard as a large principal.
Forward-looking steps alone mean a party can breach the duty for years and face only an instruction to do better. That is a weak incentive. We propose:
Principals will add pay equality clauses to contracts, ask suppliers for pay data, and pick intermediaries partly on pay practices. We expect employer-of-record and staffing providers to compete on transparency, publishing their pay frameworks. That is a healthy race to the top.
Contract updates and data requests are modest. The larger cost falls where outsourced workers are paid less for equal work, and correcting that is the point. Clear regulations on what counts as "reasonable steps" are the most important way to keep legal costs down.
Yes, for complex supply chains.
New contracts can include clauses immediately. Existing long-term contracts may need to wait for renewal or a review point, so a two-year transition for existing contracts is reasonable, with new contracts covered from commencement.
Define outsourcing to include employer-of-record, contractor-of-record and umbrella company arrangements. Require intermediaries to tell workers who the principal is and what pay range applies. Tackle false self-employment, where someone does an employee's job as a "contractor" on worse terms, by applying the duty to equivalent contractor arrangements too.
Agree, with one addition.
Consistency with the existing Equality Act scope makes sense. But scope should follow the job, not the employer's head office. Remote hiring means many adverts for GB-based roles come from employers based abroad. The advert duty should apply to any advert for a role that can be done from Great Britain, whoever posts it, or overseas employers will compete for GB talent on easier terms than UK ones. We also encourage the Northern Ireland Executive to adopt equivalent pay transparency rules, so a worker's right to see pay does not depend on which side of the Irish Sea they live.
