"Competitive salary" could be a thing of the past, and I really hope it is.
The government has opened a consultation that could require every UK employer to publish pay information in job adverts, or hand it to candidates in writing before interview if there's no advert at all. It runs until 27 October.
The detail is still being argued over, but the direction is obvious. For most industries this is a compliance headache. For estate agency it's going to sting a bit more, because we need to be honest about how our sector advertises jobs. "Competitive salary." Competitive with what?
In a decade of recruiting in this industry I've never met a candidate who read that phrase and felt intrigued. They assume it's low, and they're usually right. Then there's the OTE-only advert. £60k OTE in the headline and an £18k basic buried in the small print, if it appears at all. That £60k was earned by one negotiator, in one branch, in 2021, in a market that no longer exists. That's not a salary. It's a pie in the sky figure that won't be hit.
What this means for employers
If these proposals become law in anything like their current form, the vague advert is finished. Publishing your salaries doesn't just tell candidates what you pay. It tells your existing staff what you pay. If your longest-serving lister discovers the new starter is on £5k more because the advert said so, you're having that conversation whether you planned to or not.
The employers who'll be fine are the ones who sort their pay structures out before they're made to. Sensible bandings, a defensible reason for who sits where, and basics that don't need commission propping them up to look respectable.
The ones who'll struggle are those whose whole recruitment approach quietly depends on candidates not knowing the number until they're too far in to walk away. One in four UK job ads still don't show a salary at all. In estate agency I'd wager it's worse, because so many of ours hide behind OTE instead.
What it means for employees
Candidates have wanted this forever and so have I. Adverts with salaries attract around 27% more applications, according to recent research, because nobody wants to sit through three interviews before finding out the role pays less than the one they're leaving. Transparency saves everyone's time, including the employer's. It also hands a little power back to the applicant. When the range is public, "what are you on currently?" stops anchoring the entire negotiation.
The gender pay gap
This is the actual point of the reform, and it matters a great deal for our sector. Pay secrecy is where pay gaps hide. When salaries are negotiated in the dark, the people who negotiate hardest pull ahead, and the people who get culturally rewarded for negotiating the hardest are, still, mostly men. The research has said the same thing for years: women are less likely to apply for roles without a published salary, and less likely to be forgiven for pushing on money when they do. Estate agency has a leadership pipeline problem and a pay gap problem, and they feed each other.
Publishing real numbers won't fix either overnight, but it takes away the fog those gaps have been living in. If two branch managers doing the same job are on materially different money, someone will now have to explain why. As they should.
Younger people entering the workforce
Spare a thought for the twenty-two-year-old reading their first trainee negotiator advert. £45k OTE means nothing to someone who's never worked commission. They don't know it assumes a full pipeline, a strong market and eighteen months of surviving on a basic that barely covers rent and petrol. Then we act surprised when they leave the industry inside a year, or never join it at all. If we want the next generation to choose estate agency, and we badly need them to, the first thing they see from us shouldn't be a number that isn't achievable.
What to do now, and what to demand of your recruiters
Don't wait for the legislation. Audit your pay before someone else does. Know what everyone's on, know why, and fix the anomalies you can't defend. Quietly, now, rather than publicly, later. Publish the basic, always. OTE can sit alongside it, but only if it's real. The median of what your current team actually earned last year, not the record set by your best ever performer. Set ranges you'd be comfortable saying out loud. If a range is so wide it's meaningless, it isn't a range, it's a dodge, and eventually it'll be treated as one.
And brief your recruiters properly. I say this as someone who sits on that side of the fence: any recruiter still advertising your roles with "competitive salary" or a fantasy OTE is damaging your brand with every posting. Give them the real numbers and insist they use them. If they tell you advertising the salary weakens the negotiating position, ask whose position they mean. It was never yours. The businesses that treat this as a threat will spend the next two years being dragged towards honesty. The ones that treat it as a head start will be hiring the people everyone else scared off.
I know which side I'd rather recruit for.
