Gen Zs are talking salaries. Should companies be worried?

In the past, asking a friend how much they earned was about as welcome as reading their messages over their shoulder. Salaries were whispered about, guessed at and quietly resented over meals. But now, a new generation is dragging the number out of the shadows.

Gen Zs are sharing pay online, comparing offers with friends and using it to judge the company, and whether the pay gap between similar roles can be explained. For them, silence about money isn’t politeness. In fact, money is just another topic of discussion at their hangouts.

For the workplaces they’re joining, though, it’s a conversation that’s hard to ignore, and maybe harder to answer. As Gen Z candidates arrive at the negotiating table with more information than previous generations, companies may now have to be ready to explain their pay decisions.

Jesslyn*, 23, is “very open” with her friends about the whole process: salary, benefits and job scope. “We have mutual trust, and there isn’t much to hide,” she says. Having recently graduated, many of her peers are job-hunting, and they want to help one another.

“We compare salaries so that we know what we should expect as a fresh graduate entering our first job,” she says. “A lot of my friends are from similar industries, so knowing about the pay will definitely help us be more aware of what we can ask for, and not be too delusional about it.”

The conversations have already helped shape Jesslyn’s career. She shares that she was offered a conversion from an internship to a full-time role in the creative industry. Before accepting, she compared her offer with another intern who was up for a similar junior position in the same company but different department. That’s when Jesslyn realised she was being offered more.

“I felt bad because we both have equally crazy work loads, but I don’t really understand why there is so much discrepancy,” she admits, adding that she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she had quoted a higher figure than her friend.

When Jesslyn revealed her offer, her friend was just as confused by the gap. “I could tell she was trying to hide her disappointment, but still remain happy for me,” Jesslyn says. That conversation led her friend to reconsider her offer and re-review the job description.

Another fresh graduate Phylicia Law, 24, who is in the process of job hunting, says that she will share her pay and benefits with her close friends and parents, describing the act as “simply information sharing”.

“I want to get a gauge on whether my skill sets or the fulfilment of this job is worth the pay and make sure it’s not too low,” she says. Phylicia similarly shares her pay with friends from similar industries and watches their reaction to benchmark the reasonableness of the pay.

Still, she admits that these conversations aren’t the easiest.

“Sometimes, when I hear that my friends have high pay and good benefits, I think, ‘Why can they find that and I can’t?’ Then, it makes me feel quite sad. But I’ll also think, ‘They are really deserving of that pay because they are really skilful’ – it’s a mix of emotions.”

Information is power

Yet both Phylicia and Jesslyn agree that salary transparency is necessary, even if it remains taboo among older generations.

“Even though there are many big data articles telling job seekers what they should expect, each person’s experience is different,” Phylicia says. Work culture, she adds, weighs on her decisions as much as pay does. “Hearing personal stories helps me evaluate my decisions more carefully.”

Jesslyn believes the shift in openness may be partly because Gen Zs’ lives no longer revolve around work, which makes conversations about pay more light-hearted. She sees it as part of a broader openness among her generation, one that extends to mental health too. She even wonders whether people who keep quiet about their pay do so because of societal expectation or because they genuinely want privacy.

Both also point to a tougher job market, which has pushed Gen Zs to weather it together. “If we are more open, then we’re more aware of which companies are trying to take advantage of us, then we can make a better decision on where we invest our skills and time,” Jesslyn says.

Phylicia echoes this sentiment. “The job market is quite bad and Gen Z knows that times are tough now. So I guess we’re just trying to help a brother out.”

Can HR withstand this scrutiny?

The ball then lands in HR’s court. Joerin Yao, compensation and workforce strategy partner at HR advisory firm Enable Consulting, says companies should assume employees will compare salaries, whether internally with colleagues or externally through benchmarking information. That means organisations should expect greater scrutiny of how they pay, she says.

Salary information is now readily available through job portals, social media, online forums and benchmarking platforms, she acknowledges. Younger employees are also more comfortable discussing compensation as a way of checking whether they are paid fairly. As a result, they enter the workforce with a firmer idea of their market value, and are more inquisitive about it.

Joerin says companies should therefore put greater weight on three things:

1. Properly designed compensation structures A clear compensation philosophy, competitive salary ranges, and defensible criteria for where employees sit within those ranges, rather than simply deciding what to offer an individual.
2. Proper job analysis This establishes the relative complexity and responsibilities of different roles internally.
3. Regular salary benchmarking This shows how competitively a company pays against the market. Reviewing a pay structure once every five or 10 years is not enough, she says, as labour markets, skills demand and employee expectations can shift much faster.

Together, these allow employers to answer two different questions: Are we competitive externally, and are we equitable internally?

When the numbers don’t match

When workers do confront pay discrepancies, Joerin warns that HR should avoid becoming defensive. This is where strong job analysis comes in. Hiring managers should explain the legitimate reasons why employees with similar titles are paid differently, such as experience, performance, skills, responsibilities, market conditions at the point of hiring, or differences in actual job scope.

Two people may both be “managers”, for instance, but one may oversee a larger portfolio, carry regional responsibilities or handle more complex work. A job title alone does not make two jobs equivalent.

At the same time, HR should investigate whether the difference is genuinely explainable. Unexplained gaps can signal that the organisation needs to review its salary structure and address historical pay inconsistencies.

Managers, she adds, need to steer the conversation away from “Why does this person earn more than me?” and towards the depth of the roles, where each sits in the compensation structure and what determines salary progression. Ultimately, trust between employees and HR leaders must be maintained, and that trust needs to be supported by data, transparency and defensible HR practices.

Before you open the salary conversation

Employees have a part to play too. Joerin says it is important to understand one’s market value before starting a salary conversation, but a better first step is to check whether the comparison is truly like-for-like, looking at responsibilities, experience, specialist knowledge, performance and scope. Comparing numbers without context can breed resentment and become unhealthy.

When approaching a manager, she advises framing the discussion around the role rather than a colleague, and preparing three points:

1. Job scope What are you responsible for, and has your role expanded?
2. Contribution What measurable value or results have you delivered?
3. Salary benchmarking What does credible market information suggest comparable roles are paid?

Employees can also ask about the company’s own approach, such as its pay philosophy and whether it has evaluated the job or benchmarked salaries against the market. These make a stronger basis for a discussion than pointing out that a colleague earns more.

Explaining the number

As employees grow more comfortable discussing salaries, Joerin expects pay systems within companies to become clearer too, with greater emphasis on job architecture, competitive salary structures and clearer compensation policies.

“This does not necessarily mean organisations need to disclose everyone’s salary,” she says, noting an important distinction between salary transparency and salary disclosure. “An organisation can be transparent about how jobs are evaluated, how salary ranges are established and how employees progress through those ranges without revealing individual salaries,” she adds. “Salary transparency is about ensuring that organisations increasingly have the clarity to explain why people are paid what they are paid.”

The bottom line is, she continues, companies will need to show why a role is pegged at a particular level, and how an employee’s position within a range is determined. External advisors can help by evaluating existing practices, benchmarking pay structures against current market standards and building compensation frameworks that stand up to scrutiny.