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Skip to main contentThere was a time, not too long ago, when an organization would be considered an outlier for including salary ranges on job descriptions or disclosing gaps in compensation.
Those days are gone. Globally, few movements in the total rewards space are gaining momentum faster than pay transparency.
“Ten years ago, it was an interesting idea and even a little controversial,” says Tom McMullen, Korn Ferry senior client partner. “But now, people are doing it.”
Indeed, more organizations have pay transparency on their to-do lists than don’t. According to a recent Korn Ferry survey, 12% of global companies have already implemented a pay transparency strategy. Some 15% have developed principles to do so, and a further 29% are actively reviewing the matter.
“There truly has been a global shift of the pendulum,” says McMullen.
Pay transparency is a fast-moving and complex matter for a business to navigate, even in a local context, with evolving legislative, societal, and competitive imperatives to consider. Applied to a global scale, things can get significantly tougher to follow.
To help demystify the matter, we asked Korn Ferry experts from around the world to identify key trends in global pay transparency, share how these changes manifest in different markets, and distill what you need to know as you develop your multinational operation’s approach.
Several jurisdictions have recently put laws in place that compel companies to disclose compensation information.
The primary purpose of such legislation, says McMullen, is to create a more level playing field for job applicants and to ultimately reduce wage gaps across employee groups at the time of hire.
Europe is leading the charge. Countries in the European Union have until June 2026 to introduce the EU Pay Transparency Directive, a sweeping piece of legislation that requires employers with at least 100 employees to not only disclose gender discrepancies in compensation but also take action to close the gap.
This affects not only businesses headquartered in EU member states, but also foreign businesses that operate there—including the many UK-headquartered companies that do so. “A lot is changing in the EU space,” says Serkan Sener, Korn Ferry senior client partner. “And it’s happening quickly.”
In the United States, where employment law is determined at the state level, several jurisdictions have implemented pay transparency legislation, including California, Washington, and New York—and many more are considering it or planning to do so.
In response, several large corporations—including Microsoft, Google, and Citibank—have started sharing salary ranges across all 50 states, both to get ahead of the curve and to spare the administrative burden of managing dozens of different standards.
Across the APAC region, several governments have enacted legislation meant to air out gender discrepancies in pay.
For example, Japan began requiring larger companies to report on their gender pay gap in 2023. And in Australia, the government began publicly sharing gender pay gaps for private-sector businesses with more than 100 employees in 2024, two years after passing a bill that bans pay secrecy.
Many other markets are developing their new legislation. While the specifics of these international laws vary, their steady emergence means pay transparency should be on the radar of multinational companies based anywhere.
“It’s an important issue globally,” says McMullen. “Even if you’re headquartered somewhere without legislation, if you’re doing business in places that do—like the US or Europe—then you need to comply.”
If your company operates in markets that are developing pay transparency legislation, you’ll need to review the needs of all the constituent operations and form a multinational pay transparency strategy. Proactively engaging with stakeholders and transparently communicating your approach can help build trust and ensure smoother implementation across diverse regions.
Regulatory compliance is the primary reason most companies are investigating pay transparency, but it’s not the only one.
“Societal pressure is a major driving force,” Sener says. “We can clearly see that there's increasing demand to address fairness in employment across all employee groups, whether it’s related to gender, race, or other dimensions.”
The push comes from multiple sources. “There’s more pressure from media, politicians, and interest groups to create a more level playing field and address fairness in employment and pay,” adds Kartikey Singh, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry in Singapore. “Increasing consumer expectations are also adding pressure.”
Of course, this manifests differently in different locations. In Nordic countries like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, for example, people are already extremely comfortable with pay transparency, so expectations are very high.
By contrast, in Middle Eastern jurisdictions such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where the culture is generally more reserved, pushes for transparency may be subtler and less intense.
But experts agree that societal interest in making compensation information more public is ticking upward in virtually all markets—even if the trajectory is slower in some places than in others.
Given the range of stakeholder pressures at play, and the nuances of adapting to individual markets, experts say that a company’s multinational pay transparency efforts should be within the purview of all executive leaders.
“It's no longer just an HR issue,” says Sener. “It’s increasingly viewed as a part of corporate responsibility.”
Engage all executive leaders by aligning pay transparency initiatives with the company's core values and strategic goals.
At first glance, pay transparency might not seem to offer any obvious benefits to companies. Implementing pay transparency can be complicated, and many HR professionals—about half, according to Korn Ferry research—believe it will drive up salaries.
But pay transparency is becoming a competitive advantage, says McMullen. By openly sharing salary range information, you can build trust, attract top talent, and promote a more equitable, inclusive workplace.
Pay transparency can support employee engagement, something Korn Ferry associate client partner Claire Field has seen firsthand. “When an employer chooses to be an early adopter and say, ‘Actually, we really value the idea of an inclusive culture,’ we see how that drives employee engagement and performance,” she says.
Pay transparency can also help mitigate risk. Around the world, courts of both law and public opinion are souring on companies that hold unfair pay policies.
“In many places, we see that failure to manage equal pay creates risks related to legal challenges, penalties, and direct financial costs,” Sener explains. On top of the financial burden, this can create significant reputational damage.
For example, in the UK, workers at several major retailers are currently pursuing legal action against their employers for pay inequities, at great expense—and with plenty of bad press—to these organizations.
Finally, pay transparency can help companies keep up with competitive norms. In several countries, including India and Singapore, stock exchanges require publicly traded firms to report salary information to stay compliant, which primes investors and customers to expect it, which indirectly nudges their local and global competitors to open up, too.
“There’s a ripple effect, which is creating better disclosures and increasing transparency,” says Singh. After all, there isn’t a business in the world that wants to lag behind its rival.
This cocktail of competitive pressures is prompting savvy multinationals to establish the foundation for pay transparency within their organizations—even before they have to do it.
“Many organizations are taking pay equity and transparency audits,” Singh says. “They’re ensuring that employees understand the process of pay decisions in a more transparent manner rather than taking it as managers’ discretion.”
While the specific laws, norms, and competitive pressures affecting your organization will vary depending on the markets you serve, you should expect to get partially—if not fully—transparent about your compensation structure in the years to come. Moreover, there is significant opportunity in doing so.
“Research shows that improved practices in ESG and DE&I, including pay equity and transparency, are positively affecting performance,” says Sener. “But you need to manage them well.”
Want to explore what pay transparency might look like in your organization? Tune in to our on-demand webinar, It Pays to Plan: A Strategic Roadmap for Pay Transparency.
