Why should job boards show the salary? Q&A with Lynn Houmdi of Flexible Working Scotland

Flexible Working Scotland is an online community and jobs board focusing on flexible roles across Scotland – and is one of a growing group of job platforms accredited by We Show the Salary.

We asked founder Lynn Houmdi to tell us more about why Flexible Working Scotland is committed to showing salary info on every job ad.

Why is salary info an essential part of any job ad?

When pay is not advertised, candidates are asked to invest time, energy and emotional labour with no clear sense of whether a role is even viable for them. Many people, particularly women managing the juggle of work and caregiving, simply opt out at that point rather than take the risk.

We Show the Salary's own research backs this up: over half of UK adults say they are unlikely to apply for a job with no salary listed, and employers who do include it see applications rise by 60% or more. Salary information is not a nice-to-have on a job ad. It is the piece of information that lets someone decide, in thirty seconds, whether this is worth their time.

A lack of salary transparency is bad for candidates, and it is bad for employers, because the people who might have been a brilliant fit never apply in the first place.

Salary information is not a nice-to-have on a job ad. It is the piece of information that lets someone decide, in thirty seconds, whether this is worth their time.

And when people do apply without knowing the terms and conditions of the role (not just the pay, but also the flexible working patterns on offer), it creates additional work and potentially wasted time because candidates for whom the role is unsuitable get to the end of an expensive recruitment process without being hired.

A job is worth the skills, responsibility and experience it requires, not the lowest figure an employer thinks someone might accept, or a marginal uplift on whatever the candidate was paid before.

What trends are you noticing when it comes to salary transparency on job ads?

Momentum is building. Even recruitment giant Indeed has built a TV sponsorship campaign around the point, and over 330 employers, recruitment businesses and job boards have now signed the We Show the Salary pledge. On the other hand, according to We Show The Salary, only around 1 in 3 UK job ads currently include salary information, so there is still a long way to go before it is the norm rather than the exception.

I hope that policy changes currently under consultation will move the dial. The UK Government launched a consultation in July 2026 proposing to mandate salary information in job adverts (or in writing before interview where no advert is used) as part of a wider package of equal pay reforms. Society and culture influence policy and vice versa – this is probably an area where policy needs to change in order to bring the laggards along.

How can job boards play a role in making salary transparency the norm?

Job boards sit at the point of entry, so we are in a strong position to set the terms rather than just observe them. On the Flexible Working Scotland jobs board, every role must ShowTheSalary and StateTheFlex: no vague 'open to discussing flexibility,' no hidden pay bands.

If a job board makes both salary and clear flexibility details mandatory fields rather than an optional, employers stop treating it as a choice, and candidates learn to expect and trust it as standard. That shifts the norm at the level of the platform, rather than relying on individual employers to opt in out of good will, which is a much faster route to real change across the market.

Many of our vacancies are aggregated from other jobs boards who don’t meet this standard. We have put filters in place to stop them reaching our users, but where one slips through, we actively encourage users to report it.

If a job board makes both salary and clear flexibility details mandatory fields rather than an optional, employers stop treating it as a choice, and candidates learn to expect and trust it as standard.

What do you say to employers who want to post an ad with your job board without including salary info?

That it is not something we offer, and I am upfront with employers about our values. Flexible Working Scotland is all about increasing accessibility to employment – particularly for those who are often excluded because they need a flexible working pattern in order to work, or because they are lacking in confidence due to a life event or career break.

Vague job ads bring in unwanted applications from people who were never going to accept the terms on offer, meaning more time spent screening those out. I would rather have that conversation with an employer at the point of listing than watch them lose weeks on whittling down a shortlist that falls apart at offer stage.

What else can employers do to make sure their job ads are as inclusive and effective as possible?

State the flex specifically, not just that it is 'available.' A vague promise of flexibility does not reassure candidates that they can actually do the job around their caring responsibilities or their own lives. Specific detail means a higher quality candidate pool because those who couldn’t do the job don’t apply. The same goes for salary information.

Fair, flexible work is not a perk or a lifestyle preference. It is an equity issue, and it starts with how the ad is written.

Beyond that, it is worth looking hard at the person specification and separating what is genuinely essential from what has simply always been asked for, because inflated requirements disproportionately put off women and under-represented candidates from applying at all.

Plain language matters too: strip out jargon and internal shorthand that only make sense to people already inside the organisation. And it is worth asking, honestly, whether the role as designed is a human-sized job, one that someone can do well within the hours on offer, rather than three people's work squeezed into one job description. Conversely, a part-time candidate might get the work done at a lower cost – do not assume all roles need to be full-time.

Fair, flexible work is not a perk or a lifestyle preference. It is an equity issue, and it starts with how the ad is written.