More employers in the UK plan to include salary ranges in job postings, joining a broader global push to boost pay transparency.

Some 48% of businesses said they will include pay data in listings in the next two years, up from 17% right now, according to a survey by Mercer Inc. The consulting firm received responses from 98 companies, which collectively have more than 1.5 million employees in the UK.

“It seems like a really positive thing for employers to be doing,” said Lucy Brown, a DEI and pay equity consulting leader at Mercer. “Employees who say they’re fairly paid are twice as likely to say they understand why they’re paid what they’re paid.”

Pay transparency is gaining momentum in many parts of the world. And it’s coming at a time when labor markets are tight in several regions, putting more pressure on companies to provide salary data to lure talent.

More than half of the companies surveyed say they’re motivated by compliance requirements in other regions; the UK doesn’t have any. The EU Pay Transparency Directive means that most companies in the bloc will have to post salary ranges starting in June 2026. Several US states, including New York and California, have already introduced pay data requirements.

The majority of companies also plan to have a global strategy on pay rather than deferring to local rules, the survey shows, suggesting that other factors ,— including hiring and retention —  remain problems amid a tight labor market.

Fair pay is becoming more important to employees, according to Mercer’s 2024 Global Talent Trends report, ranking as the second-most cited reason for staying at a firm — up from fourth in 2022.

That same report said that employees who change jobs often receive an average pay increase of 16% compared to a 5.6% bump for those who remain at their jobs. There’s another reason to default to transparency: Like millennials, Gen Z employees are more likely to talk about pay than previous generations.

Pay transparency has also been shown to reduce the gender pay gap, according to a 2022 paper in Nature Human Behaviour, but the impact depends on how it’s implemented.