Having salary ranges posted on job boards 'pushes the talent team to operate with more discipline and more upfront clarity,' says expert
Pay transparency rules are forcing employers to overhaul compensation structures, tighten internal equity, and rethink how they hire – and HR leaders who fail to adapt risk damaging trust, culture, and talent pipelines.
Speaking about Ontario’s new requirement for salary ranges on job postings, Laura Risdorfer, head of talent acquisition at Workleap, says public ranges are no longer optional “nice to have” information – they expose whether HR has a disciplined, defensible approach to pay.
On the employer side, she says, salary disclosure is pushing talent and HR teams to professionalise their compensation practices.
“Having those salary ranges posted on the job boards… pushes the talent team to operate with more discipline and more upfront clarity,” she explains. “We need to have a more mature compensation structure to be able to discuss that with candidates upfront, and also to discuss it with hiring managers when positioning candidates.”
With the arrival of 2026, Ontario’s new rule on job postings officially took effect.
Ontario’s new law
Despite the potential challenges, Risdorfer welcomes Ontario’s new disclosure requirement. “I think it’s a really good thing,” she says. “It removes ambiguity and it builds trust up front.”
She notes that strong recruiters were already trying to address pay early in the process, but the law formalises and strengthens that practice. With posted ranges, candidates are less likely to fear being low‑balled and more willing to have open discussions about where they might fall within a band.
Because candidates now have the salary “up front,” she says, it removes the “dance” of wondering, “Should I say that I expect more? Should I say that I expect less?”
Surprisingly, Risdorfer has not seen a surge of candidates insisting on the top of the range. Many, she says, become more flexible once they understand how levels and expectations map to specific points within the band.
More efficient hiring, deeper candidate conversations
One immediate impact that Risdorfer reports is that salary ranges improve the quality of applicants and reduce mismatches. With clear pay information visible from the outset, many candidates decide on their own whether to proceed.
She notes that posted ranges give “more quality in terms of candidate pipeline since a lot of them will self‑qualify [or] disqualify before applying.”
Risdorfer says salary transparency also changes the tone of early‑stage interviews. Instead of circling around expectations, candidates arrive better informed and more trusting of the process.
“It removes ambiguity early and turns compensation into a more strong conversation with candidates,” she says. “There’s trust upfront since this is the salary range on the job posting, and the conversation is more about the impact of the role with the team, the managers, how they can grow into the role.”
Internal equity in spotlight
However, transparency also surfaces inconsistencies that HR may have previously managed quietly. Posting ranges gives employees and candidates a public benchmark against which to compare their own pay.
“It won’t… automatically fix the internal equity if you have issue with that,” Risdorfer cautions. “However, it makes the system more visible. Employees benchmark [against] posted range.”
If current staff see that new hires in the “same role” could earn significantly more, “that will create… friction… with the culture,” she adds.
Handing pay transparency
To make pay transparency work, Risdorfer argues that organisations must tighten their internal frameworks. “You need… clear guideline[s] on… how are we levelling people in the… range, how we assess them,” she says. HR must be able to explain why “someone will be early on… the start of the salary range instead of at the end.”
This requires agreed‑upon definitions of what junior, intermediate, and senior actually mean in each role, and how those definitions translate into pay decisions – work that sits squarely with HR and compensation teams.
Risdorfer also urges companies to plan upfront for niche or highly competitive roles, such as AI specialists, where standard ranges may not be enough. In such cases, she suggests exploring structured alternatives like sign‑on bonuses or additional equity, while still protecting internal equity.
Ontario's pay transparency rules are already in effect. And while it’s hoped that most employers are aware of the incoming requirements to disclose compensation in job postings, many may not be fully prepared for the practical implications.
