Following the announcement around salary transparency and the gender pay divide, Joe Wiggins Career Trends Analyst at Glassdoor comments: “Salary transparency in the UK is long overdue and it’s a shame it has taken Government intervention to finally make organisations sit up and listen.

However, our research has shown that just 35% of employees know what their colleagues earn so this is clearly a wider issue than just the gender pay divide – it impacts all employees. For (60%) of employees this will be music to their ears as they claimed in our research that companies should be forced to be more transparent.

“Eliminating the gender pay divide is just the tip of the iceberg, we’d really like to see the Government look at salary transparency in its entirety as it impacts every employee. Our business has been built on transparency, offering information for both new and existing employees across the globe. This is the future for employees as working with limited information becomes a thing of the past. We hope this cloak and dagger approach to recruitment will be finally eliminated.”

·   Just 35 percent of employees know what their colleagues earn, of those that know, more than a third (38 percent) said that it was because their colleagues are very open about discussing salary and compensation.

·   Nearly one in four (22 percent) said it was through office gossip and five percent said that someone in the office had left sensitive information lying around. A further 4 percent claim they obtained this information from ‘someone in HR’.

·   52 percent of employees think it would create more trust between employer and employees, plus 48 percent believe it would force employers to create a more level playing field when it comes to setting salary ranges.

·   A further 45 percent believe that it would help eliminate the gender pay gap, which is a far wider reaching issue.

·   Overall, 42 percent of employees feel comfortable sharing their salaries and this rises to 51 percent if it was anonymous.

·   One in five employers (20 percent) share salary information internally within the company and 13 percent outside of the organisation.

·   Glassdoor helps job seekers circumvent salary secrecy, providing people with opportunities to research salaries submitted by employees at more than 340,000 companies, organizations and academic institutions. For example, a Brand Manager can see what they can earn at Unilever, Procter & Gamble or Diageo.