Will my colleague know when I get a raise and vice versa?
No. According to the new European rules, which must be transposed into national legislation, the employer will not be obliged to communicate exactly how much a specific employee earns. That would also lead too far, every situation is different. Some have completed other training or have years of experience. And then it also makes a difference whether or not you have children and how far you live from work to calculate how much net you will have left.
“Employees especially want to gain insight into the rules and procedures surrounding pay increases. It creates a greater sense of justice,” says Ellen Roelants, compensation & benefits specialist at Acerta. “This way you will see that employees can make peace with wage differences.”
From 2026, employers will be obliged to inform job seekers about the starting salary or pay scale of the position during vacancies and job interviews. In addition, they are not allowed to ask candidates about their previous salary. Once hired, employees can request information about the average wages of colleagues who perform equivalent work, broken down by gender and the criteria used to determine wages. These must be objective and gender neutral.
Finally, a report will also have to be drawn up for the government and employees who are victims of wage discrimination can go to court.
Will this provide more opportunities to ask for a raise (or not)?
That is not the actual intention of this measure, but it could well turn out that way. You then immediately know how much colleagues with a similar job profile earn. What if you notice that you earn less than the average? It is important to first take a step back and see whether those colleagues are not doing more or do not have more expertise or responsibility.
Previous research by SD Worx among 16,000 employees in sixteen countries shows that almost half (47 percent) of Belgian employees find it no problem to openly discuss the contents of his or her salary package with colleagues. A quarter prefer to keep this to themselves and 28 percent do not really have an opinion about this. In half of the European countries people are much more open about this.
“The younger generation is more assertive in this regard, everything is shared more with them,” said Maaike De Prins, HR consultant at SD Worx, previously on Radio 1. “They also dare to be more aggressive in salary negotiations. For older generations, wages are more within privacy.”
Won’t this create resentment in the workplace?
Professor Timothy Desmet (VUB), specialized in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, sees two possible avenues. “If everything runs fairly within a company, this can provide reassurance. The grass always seems greener on the other side, but if you see that you are being paid correctly, that can help give you peace of mind.” This transparency would mean that employees would be less concerned about the financial aspect of their job.
It is different if an employee has the impression that he does not receive enough pay for his work compared to his colleagues. Desmet: “That would have a major effect on motivation. Intrinsic motivation – getting satisfaction from the content of the job – would then be converted into extrinsic motivation. It could come to a standstill if you notice that you can no longer take many steps upwards.”
A lot depends on how companies deal with this. “If they have a positive attitude, they will be able to use that as an objective means to map wage tensions. And then the employees will also appreciate this,” Desmet concludes.
“Managers must clearly understand the principles behind the wage policy, so that they have clear means to communicate about wages,” Roelants adds. “This also prevents employees from having to turn to HR and HR from having to play the role of bogeyman.”
Why is Europe coming up with this?
Pay transparency should give employees the opportunity to detect and tackle discrimination between women and men. That was the main motivation for introducing these rules. Gender biases in pay and job evaluation are still very common. In the European Union, women earn on average 13 percent less per hour than their male colleagues. The pension gap in the EU is even around 30 percent.
Since this bias is often unconscious, pay transparency can make employers more aware of the issues and help them identify discriminatory gender-based pay gaps that cannot be explained by equity factors.
Before introducing these European regulations, only half of the countries were prepared to implement them. It will therefore become an obligation from 2026.
Tags: wages provide reassurance
-
