Mwangi works as a recruiter in a Nairobi-based recycling firm. He advertises vacant positions with a very broad salary band of Sh50,000 to Sh300,000 fluctuation on either side around the actual target salary of positions. So, a role with an intended salary of Sh200,000 would be advertised with a salary ranging from Sh100,000 to Sh300,000, as an example.
But applicants raise many questions to Mwangi about integrity, then hesitate to apply, and ultimately seek other job alternatives with the firm’s competitors.
Internal staff members also notice the wide salary band and complain about perceived unfairness thinking that most new hires must be making at the highest end of the band, thus resulting in demoralisation among the workforce.
Meanwhile, Achieng oversees recruitment for a Kisumu renewable-energy cooperative. She cites market surveys then picks a targeted salary range and finally includes the figure for the specific job roles in all advertisements.
Achieng has learned that applicants like transparency and when they know the cost-benefit of a job, they then apply with better resumes and engage more confidently in interviews.
Likewise, current employees stay on topic with manager-staff dialogue, feel more valued, and reaffirm their workplace effort in employee engagement surveys and display better performance outcomes.
Most of us in our professional roles can remember irritating interview experiences when we are asked our expected salary for a new role.
Fearful of pricing ourselves out of the job or under quoting and getting stuck with a low offer, many Kenyan employees would prefer what some other countries now require in that job advertisements should carry the actual salary range for the position.
But not an unrealistically large range, like what Mwangi in the above example was trying. But employees want a tight realistic salary range so as to manage their expectations and decisions on their prospective role. Human resources research supports this job candidate preference.
Researchers Richard Trotter, Susan Rawson Zacur, and Lisa Stickney cover an American Executive Order 13665 and describe the commensurate heightened review of compensation for twenty-eight million contract employees.
The study chronicles persistent gender and race compensation gaps and argue that open compensation transparency enables managers to narrow unfair pay gaps.
The authors also report that companies who already disclose their salary remuneration in tight realistic bands establish trust and motivation and reduce discrimination all with higher application rates for advertised positions.
Social scientist Kristine Kuhn experiments with formally pay-transparency-compliant advertisements that have very wide salary ranges.
She then conducted three preregistered experiments to demonstrate that large salary ranges sadly induce applicant distrust, lower perceived organisational trustworthiness, and drag expected offers down to the lower bound of the range.
Additional findings demonstrate job applicants’ aversion to the role and salary even when explanations are provided because they view the offer with uncertainty and thus pointing to a credibility issue in how they view the hiring firm. Therefore, the research suggests that advertised pay specificity anchors positive impressions and recruits talent effectively.
Additional research by David Arnold, Simon Quach, and Bledi Taska evaluate the American state of Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act regulation and thereby track labour-market responses.
The new regulation resulted in a thirty-percentage-point rise in job advertisements with pay information. However, firms still tried to hold back full disclosure at large scale.
The regulation resulted in surprising wage increases of 1.3 to 3.6 percent without reducing any employment or requiring increases in skills needed for the jobs. Researchers therefore credit the gains to more pure competition based on public salary disclosure, which helps society at large.
For us to be competitive, Kenyan organisations must take tight target ranges, make them available on a consistent basis in job advertisements, and then refreshing numbers after carrying out regular market research.
Human resources managers must train recruitment teams in providing explanations for every number and addressing job candidates’ inquiries using facts and not general useless statements.
Entities can utilise internal dashboards that compare actual compensation to external norms then identify variances in real time that allows for initiating immediate remedial corrective action. Further, open transparent job salary range posting and continuous audit reduces legal risk and improves employer-brand reputation.
Then, both applicants and employers may negotiate salaries more assertively based on facts, establish career development milestones for new hires, and pick up early warning signs of unfair practice with open postings.
Employees should document their capabilities, gather their own market data as much as possible, and negotiate their case for higher salaries within the band along with supportive evidence.
Employees who find there is too much vagueness in the job advertisement may ask or seek openings with firms that embrace openness.
Generation Z holds lower tolerance for job advert ambiguity. Mutual employer, job candidate, and current employee vigilance causes organisations to have open cultures that reward fairly in a desirable meritocratic way.
In summary, salary range disclosure research reaches the common conclusion that open, truthful, and frequent communication regarding pay creates trust, mitigates competition, and increases earnings without harming employment.
Kenyan companies that adhere to best practices research will recruit more suitable candidates, retain current employees at higher rates, and fulfill potential regulatory requirements. A national trend towards transparency will transform workplace relations and foster more fairness across our economy.
Have a management or leadership issue, question, or challenge? Reach out to Dr. Scott through @ScottProfessor on X or on email [email protected]
