3 million messages: Is your workforce using ChatGPT to check their pay?

Three million messages. That’s roughly how many are being sent to ChatGPT by U.S. workers, on average, asking about wages, compensation or earnings every day.

Most often, they’re looking for two kinds of insights: translating pay into a usable benchmark, and understanding what a role, company, career path or business idea might realistically pay.

At the same time, fresh pay transparency laws across Canada in provinces such as Ontario and B.C. are forcing employers to reveal how much they pay people.

Should HR be worried? We talked to two HR experts for insights —and recommendations — on how to respond to this new wave of enlightenment by both jobseekers and employees.

Given the growing flow of pay data to workers through AI and other channels, Anil Verma believes the pressure on employers will only increase.

“Pay will remain very, very important in the future — as it is today — and it will become a more demanding task for managers, who will be required to have a rationale, have an explanation, have a basis for determining salary and compensation.”

The information is out there, and people will find it, agrees Louisa Benedicto, senior vice-president for Halifax, Ottawa and the HR recruiting division at Hays.

“Gone are the days where it was a song and dance at the end of the interview process to see what you might get.”

Pay calculations from ChatGPT

The recent report about pay questions by OpenAI — creator of ChatGPT — shows the popularity of labeled wage-benchmarking messages to the AI platform:

• pay calculation (26%)
• specific role (19%)
• entrepreneurship (18%)
• specific role at a company (11%)
• occupation or career questions (11%).

Those questions are heavily concentrated in occupations where pay is opaquer and negotiable: arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media; management; healthcare; transportation; sales; and business and financial operations, and in higher-skill and less transparent occupations such as creative fields, management, healthcare, and computer and mathematical roles.

^{Source: OpenAI}

For employers, that means more candidates walking into interviews with salary benchmarks in hand — and more employees comparing their own pay to what AI says they “should” be earning.

Should HR worry about AI-fuelled pay challenges?

For organizations that already have clear structures and honest communication around pay, AI‑driven questions should not be a cause for alarm, says Benedicto.

“When you are transparent and honest, there should be nothing to worry about,” she says.

“When you have communicated well your pay philosophy and what an individual needs in order to reach a different band or a different level within a band, then there should be no ambiguity,” says Benedicto.

And the great thing about pay transparency is it's forcing everyone to do that, she says, “whereas, as we know, in the old days it was always a very hush‑hush conversation and people were negotiating based on their negotiation skills, not necessarily what they brought for the role or what their future potential looked like.”

Verma takes a similar line for organizations that may feel exposed by the newer tools and legislation.

“If you're hiding things and you would be embarrassed if they were found out, then of course you should worry. But I'm not sure if that is always the case,” he says.

“Employers are smart people, and they would know that this kind of comparison goes on, and they would accordingly adjust their practices.”

The real risk is not the technology but a lack of preparedness, says Verma.

“Employers who are less transparent would find themselves more vulnerable, in that the employee could be armed with all this data.”

Is AI data accurate about pay?

Despite workers’ heavy use of AI for compensation questions, both experts caution that current tools still have blind spots.

Benedicto, for example, tested AI outputs against the Hays salary guide during a recent review.

“I tested it on Copilot at the time to see what Copilot came up with, and it was very inaccurate. When you dig into where it's getting the information, a lot of it is U.S. resources,” she says.

“It will get better and someone's going to create a tool for sure… an AI salary checker that's coming from the best resources. But today, I don't think it's particularly accurate.”

Variable compensation is an even bigger challenge. Asked about bonuses and commissions, Benedicto says bluntly: “I haven't seen AI do a good job on that.”

Verma agrees there can be a lag with the AI information when it comes to facts around compensation, and is cautious about the depth of information, especially where stock options, lump sum payments and benefit contributions complicate the picture.

However, it will still be useful for job candidates and employees, he says, and they can “interrogate the data,” such as asking for salary info by market, occupation or province.

“Some of these models might say that you're being underpaid. In which case, of course, it would fire up people with more emotion than you would want, and they would go and confront that employer,” says Verma.

“So, in that sense, I think employers should be fully aware of what information is available through AI and to be prepared.”

Laws, internal audits push employers toward transparency

Even without AI, new transparency rules are driving employers to re‑examine their pay practices. In Ontario and British Columbia, for example, public job postings must specify what the role will pay. This can be presented as either a single compensation figure or a salary band.

And some leaders are struggling, says Benedicto.

“I've seen a lot of employers not following the new legislation yet,” she says. “It's hard to say why they're not — I've definitely had a couple of clients say to me: ‘It's a heavy, heavy lift and you've got to employ someone to come in and do it.’”

For many, the first hurdle is the internal work needed to uncover and fix inequities, “and then they’re worried about what they'll find, because once you find the discrepancies, ethically, you need to find a way to true up or to level up,” says Benedicto.

“And if you're large and you're very big and you haven't had good control over comp and you haven’t got good bands… that can be very big for organizations and a heavy lift.”

Legislation is also reshaping the hiring conversation. Benedicto points to changes in British Columbia, where recruiters can no longer ask someone how much they earn.

“In the old days it was, ‘What do you want? I'll give you 10 to 20 percent more to come to us,’ in a reasonable market,” she says. “Whereas now it's ‘This is what the role pays. Are you comfortable in that range? Yes/No,’ and then it's down to the employer to decide where you would sit in that range.”

That shift, she says, “absolutely has to save time and not waste people's time.”

Training managers on pay philosophy

Both experts stress that the front line of pay transparency is not HR or legal — it is managers.

“The really key point is if they've actually trained their leaders to speak to [candidates] because that's often where the conversations can happen,” says Benedicto. “If they're not prepared to be able to have that conversation and to be able to speak to and — ‘defend’ is a strong word, but, essentially defend — the company's position around comp, then that's where I think things become tricky.”

She argues that many leaders are still uncomfortable discussing money.

“We have to get them comfortable with talking about it, and then we have to train them how to talk about it,” she says.

In practice, Benedicto has seen success where line managers have some kind of script stating, “Here's what our pay philosophy is.’” That might include being explicit about market position — for example, “We're somewhere at the 70th quartile” or “Here's where you sit, here's the band.”

That’s particularly important given the environment lately.

“We’re in this ‘great stagnation.’ People have not been getting career advancement and they’ve not been getting compensation increases over the last couple of years because of the market.

“So, they’re even more hyper-focused on how they’re getting paid.”

It’s about getting ahead of the conversation by saying, “Here's where you are today. Here's what skills you need to gain in order to get to the next level. And here's what you'll get paid for that,” says Benedicto, which will make people less likely to question it themselves or to leave.

Which is also why emphasizing the total rewards offered is important, says Benedicto: “Base [pay], bonus, benefits, annual leave, all that other stuff is very important and this is the bit that managers really need to know how to speak to.”

Hiding behind confidentiality

Verma agrees that the old reliance on “confidentiality” is fading. In the old days, managers could state that all salaries are confidential and confronted with questions, some would tell employees: “‘Look, someone has told you wrong information. That's not how it is. I cannot tell you what it is, but it's not what you think it is,’ and be able to obfuscate the truth behind confidentiality,” he says.

So, it would be a good idea for organizations to train managers to reasonably articulate the rationale for pay in the company, says Verma. And with the greater scrutiny these days, it can’t be vague or approximate, he says.

“It has to be more precise and better grounded in some rationale in the values of the organization, because that's how you can defend it,” he says.

“Whatever the rationale is, it should be better articulated, better publicized, and managers should be prepared to explain salary decisions in those terms.”

And there should always be room for individual variation, says Verma, with salaries often based on unique skill sets along with both individual performance and group performance.

Getting specific: realistic pay ranges

With AI and legislation pushing expectations higher, generic or inflated job ads are increasingly risky, says Benedicto — especially where bonuses and commissions are involved.

“These lofty numbers of ‘Your on-target earnings could be’ don’t really land well with people,” she says. “What people want to know is ‘What have people actually been making in these roles?’”

For example, in a sales role with a base of $60,000 and on‑target earnings of $120,000, Benedicto advises posting what incumbents have actually earned in recent years: “Try and put the realistic total comp as the range so it's defensible, you're not lying and it's more realistic to a candidate.”

Clarity around structure matters too, she says, so that means running an advert showing the total compensation is $100,000, made up of a $60,000 base and $40,000 commission — which has been achieved over the last couple of years.

And working with Indeed, Benedicto says the data is clear: Job postings that are transparent about compensation lead to better quality candidates and faster-to-fill roles, by 30 to 35 percentage points more.

“Use it as a positive tool,” she says, both for recruitment and performance management.

Trust and the ‘psychological contract’

Salary is at the very heart of the employment contract, and when people work for an organization, they are making a psychological contract, according to Verma: “If you promise me a good wage and good working conditions and promise to help me build my career, I will give you my time, my energy, my creative ideas, my soul — this is the bargain.’”

If employees feel that contract is being broken, they are likely to withdraw their best ideas or reduce their productivity, he says. And while concerns about job loss might keep them performing at a minimum level, “fear is never the best motive for getting the best out of the employee,” he says.

“The top end is only achieved, [by] the top performers, when people feel good about their employment,” says Verma. “They feel that they are getting an employer — an employer who recognizes excellence — then they're motivated to excel.”

Which is why pay will remain very important now and in the future, he says.

“And it will become a more demanding task for managers, who will be required to have a rationale, have an explanation, have a basis for determining salary and compensation.”