Employers need to be preparing for new pay transparency rules, despite their delay in Ireland, according to human resources and employment law professionals. They also believe the new measures could lead to discontent and conflict among employees.The European Union’s Pay Transparency Directive, which will see employers obliged to disclose salary ranges to job applicants and provide more pay information to employees, was due to be transposed into law in each EU member state by a June 7th deadline.However, work is continuing on the required legislation in Ireland.Despite the delay, Moira Grassick, chief operations officer at employment law and HR firm Peninsula Ireland, says employers should be taking action to prepare for its implementation due to the level of work that will be required.“That would make things much smoother and it also shows employees that they’re being proactive,” she says. “My sense is [that] employees are waiting for that and employers should be getting ahead of the game.”[ Is the new guy earning more than you? New pay rules will reveal the truth ]The “expectation in Ireland”, Grassick says, is that salary details may need to be included in job advertisements, which could cause discontent among existing employees in similar roles.“They could be advertising a job that’s €5,000 or €6,000 more than the person who’s actually in the job, so that has the potential to cause a bit of a ruckus,” she says.Damien McCarthy, founder and chief executive of consultancy firm HR Buddy, says employers expected the auto-enrolment pension scheme introduced this year to be “a huge load of work”.“If there was a worry about the introduction of pension auto-enrolment, this is going to a lot more difficult and complex for workplaces to comply with,” he says, noting that “an awful lot of the work” required for auto-enrolment was handled by the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA).Much of the action required under the pay transparency rules, however, will be up to employers, he says. He is “working closely” with clients to prepare, despite the legislation’s delay, “for however long it’s delayed, we don’t know, and there’s an awful lot of uncertainty around that as well which also causes frustration”, he says.Like Grassick, he says there is “no doubt” the new rules could give rise to conflict in workplaces. Among other things, employees will be able to request the average pay for their role from their employers.“No employee is going to get a list of [employee salaries], you’re going to get an average, but it’s still going to cause trouble,” he says.Although he supports the directive’s intent – to reduce the gender pay gap – McCarthy is critical of the new rules, saying they will be “tying rope around the employer or organisation” as opposed to “dealing with gender pay gaps from a positive point of view, going to the root cause”.To bring about pay equality, McCarthy believes “you have to go back to the root causes rather than just introducing more rules and compliance, box-ticking legislation”.“It’s things like lack of childcare resources, the cost of childcare in this country and you need to go back to employment legislation and look at how other countries are doing this better.”“Some Scandinavian countries have shared maternity rights,” he says by way of example.“Our employment law is outdated. They’re doing it better in other countries and what we do is we just take box-ticking legislation from the EU and think we’re heroes for introducing more rules,” he says.If you have work-related questions, from how to deal with burnout to running your own business or these incoming regulations, The Irish Times Work Q&A column is here to help. You can use the form below to submit your question. Please limit your submissions to 400 words or less and please include a phone number. Your name and contact details will be confidential and only be used for verification purposes. Any details about your employer will also be anonymised.