It’s time we include salary in Content + UX job postings

Announcing a new policy for one of the largest content communities

TL;DR: In an effort to support pay equity in content strategy and adjacent fields, the Content + UX community is strengthening our job posting requirements as of today:

• Going forward, all job openings posted to Content + UX must include salary or project budget details (a range is fine).
• This applies to permanent, contract, freelance, full-time, and part-time positions.
• Unpaid internships will not be allowed (though volunteer roles, clearly marked, are fine).

Our membership is global and diverse. Particularly as we enter an economic crisis in which all workers will face an uphill battle for fair compensation, we believe it’s critical that equity be placed at the center of employment discussions. This policy change isn’t meant to solve the many underlying issues contributing to the pay gap. It is intended to make the issues visible and help our community take a step toward greater equity in our field.

Beginning a conversation about pay equity

A few years back, when I was a regular member of the Content + UX community, I posed a question: would we ever consider requiring salary disclosure in job postings? As a support group for content professionals, it seemed like an easy way to help mitigate pay inequity in our industry. Salary transparency helps level the playing field for traditionally marginalized people, who statistically receive lower salaries and are punished for negotiating for fair pay.

A short time later, Michael Metts handed over the reins as the community’s caretaker and I now was able to act on the question. After a member survey and a lot of discussion (sometimes heated, but always thought-provoking), we officially changed the Content + UX policy to incentivize job postings that included pay details. Postings without salary would be delayed and abridged before being shared. It was a start. But a year into this experiment, we’re (finally) putting a stake in the ground: salary disclosure will be a requirement for any job opening shared in the group from now on. We’re also banning the posting of unpaid internships.

Collecting data about job postings

I started tracking postings shared in the #job-openings channel in mid-2018. I wanted a better picture of what type of opportunities were being shared in our group and I particularly wanted some hard data around salary disclosure. There’s surprisingly little data to be had around this particular aspect of the pay gap. I figured our group, though representing a small fraction of the job market, could be as good a place to start as any.

My process was completely manual at first, so there are some holes in the early data. It’s more automated now, though not by much. I track a limited number of details:

• The number of content-specific and non-content jobs posted (we allow the sharing of content-adjacent roles)
• For all content-specific job openings, the number of freelance/contract, in-house, and internship roles
• For all content job openings, the number of postings that include salary details
• Whether a content job opening was shared by the employee of the hiring company, or a member who was just passing along a posting they found

Voluntary salary disclosure rose with the initial policy change

With over a year of steady data to review, I’m excited to see that our initial experiment appears to be working: members are increasingly sharing job openings with salary details included. Though the numbers fluctuate month to month, the overall trend is upwards.

These numbers are even more reassuring when we look at the numbers as a percentage of all content jobs. Over time, the percentage of content jobs that include salary details has increased overall.

Leveling the playing field for in-house roles

While the proportions change from month to month, in-house roles consistently make up the majority of openings shared in the Content + UX community. Given this, it becomes very clear that salary disclosure can be particularly beneficial for our members.

There are a number of aspects of the in-house hiring process that contribute to pay inequity. Let’s start with implicit or unconscious bias. “Six times out of 10, women are offered less money than men to do the exact same job at the exact same company,” says an annual study from hiring.com. “On average, that salary figure is 3% less.”

Women don’t negotiate their pay as often as men, either. Even when they do, they’re not as successful at it. In fact, they’re generally punished for it. Non-white candidates experience similar discrimination. “When black job applicants negotiated their starting salaries, evaluators viewed them as more pushy than white job applicants who also negotiated…,” writes the New York Times’ Kristin Wong about a study titled Bargaining While Black. “Worse still, the black job applicants received lower starting salaries as a result of this.”

“When black job applicants negotiated their starting salaries, evaluators viewed them as more pushy than white job applicants who also negotiated…”

For members just beginning their content career, these salaries often set a baseline in an applicant’s career path over time. Setting such a baseline this early can be particularly dangerous. According to various research cited by Newsweek, women may lose up to $407,760 over the course of their careers due to the pay gap. Women of color fare much worse, losing up to $944,800. And if you’re latina, you may lose up to $1,121,440. While many states are passing laws restricting companies from asking for salary history, the practice is far from over. A lowball salary early on, therefore, can plague someone for decades to come.

By disclosing salary in the job posting itself, any offers or negotiations that do happen start at the same level. Disclosing salary in the job description may not solve the gender pay gap, but it’s a step toward equity.

Discouraging exploitation in non-employee roles

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the economy, I suspect we’ll see the proportion of in-house to contract roles posted in Content + UX change a bit. We may see more freelance and contract roles as companies go through layoffs seeking to replace high-cost employees. The tech industry as a whole has already embraced the practice of replacing whole swaths of their workforce with contract labor as a way of avoiding the cost of things like workers’ comp insurance and healthcare. There’s no reason to believe this will change as the pandemic pushes corporate leadership to look for cost cuts. In Content + UX, even contract roles and freelance opportunities will need to include pay details, whether it’s an hourly rate or overall project budget range.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see more internships, too. We’ve already seen a small increase over the past few months, though this may be cyclical. Happily, we don’t generally see many unpaid internships shared in our group, but we’re banning them going forward. Genuine volunteer roles will be allowed, as long as they’re clearly marked.

Helping employees have a salary conversation with employers

One of the biggest arguments against requiring salary disclosure in Content + UX has been our members’ desire to share openings unfettered. Looking at the numbers, though, most jobs are shared by employees and hiring managers on behalf of their company. This presents us with a huge opportunity to support these content professionals, many of whom have expressed a desire for their companies to be more transparent.

Most content strategists and UX writers don’t necessarily feel they’re able to be agents of change at the organizational level. A respondent to our early job channel survey expressed it well: “We all have different battles to fight in the workplace, and salary transparency may not be the one that everyone chooses to pick with their HR department.” By pointing to our group’s policy, they don’t have to.

Employees who don’t want to go to battle for salary disclosure can simply cite our policy. It reframes the conversation so it’s not about their personal beliefs. “I was actually surprised at how easy it was,” one member told me when describing his request to include salary details in a new role. “Because the Slack group has a simple and clear policy, I was able to just state the policy instead of making an argument.”

Over the coming months, we’ll work with content leaders in our community to provide them with additional support in communicating our policy throughout their organizations.

Can a professional community be a catalyst for new standards?

Content + UX is 7,000 members strong. We’re one of the largest content-focused groups in the field. People look to our membership for best practices, which is one of the things that makes the community so valuable to its members. Conversations in our group regularly shape how content teams are formed throughout the industry. What we do can — and does — shape company policy. I continue to receive messages and thanks from members who have successfully included salary in job descriptions as a direct result of our policy changes.

People want salary details when job searching. So many employers these days require huge time commitments from candidates — rounds of interviews, take-home assignments, hoop after hoop after hoop. Including a salary range in job postings allows candidates to opt out of roles that don’t offer them a livable wage. It creates a more level playing field for female applicants, applicants of color, LGBTQ+ candidates, those with disabilities — anyone who might otherwise feel the impact of implicit bias in the hiring process. And it can save employers thousands of dollars for every hire who would otherwise drop out toward the end of the recruiting process due to an unacceptable salary (there’s also research suggesting that salary disclosure increases productivity).

At a time when content professionals face an economy designed to exploit labor of any kind, it’s more important than ever that groups like Content + UX step up to support our members. I realize some will miss being able to share openings without these details. But those roles are typically available in many other places, including the conventional job listings sites.

I fully believe Content + UX has an opportunity to lead — to set a standard for our field that all content professionals deserve equal pay and that we will put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. We’ve already seen companies become more transparent as a direct result of our policy. It’s time to make it the norm, not the exception. I’m excited to roll out our new policy beginning today, and I look forward to exploring more ways to support our members as we all navigate the rocky employment landscape ahead of us.