V7 Labs is a London-based AI software company specializing in AI agents for the finance, legal, and insurance industries. Joe Stephenson, Senior People Operations Manager, explains why pay transparency has been a non-negotiable from day one.
Your job postings include salary ranges. What is your overall positioning on pay transparency, and to what extent have you adopted it?
Pay transparency is a fundamental part of how we recruit and how we operate internally. We publish salary ranges on every single job posting without exception. But transparency doesn't stop at the job posting. Internally, we're fully open about how those numbers are built: what tools we use, what market data we reference, which variables we take into account. Employees can access all of that. We also maintain internal documentation so that anyone at V7 can understand where they sit within a band and why. It's a high level of transparency, deliberately chosen.
What motivates this approach?
At the core, it's about honesty and integrity. From a candidate's perspective, seeing a salary range before you even apply sends an immediate signal about how we operate as a company. It reflects something deeper about our culture: we don't hide things. One of our company values is extreme ownership: we own what we do, we explain why we do it, and there are no questions we can't answer.
Practically, it removes a lot of anxiety. Nobody has to wonder whether they're underpaid compared to a colleague, or whether the job offer they receive is fair. Everything is on the table from the start. It also acts as a natural filter: candidates who are genuinely aligned with our compensation philosophy self-select in. And because we pay at the 90th percentile of the market, transparency actually drives ambition. It attracts people who are motivated by the level of expectation that comes with that.
You operate in both the UK and the US, two markets with different cultures and regulations. How do you navigate that?
Honestly, being transparency-first makes it easier, not harder. Because we already have a structured approach to compensation, we're not caught off guard by regulatory requirements, we're already ahead of them. There are practical questions that come up, like when a role posted for New York ends up being hired in London, and you have to adjust the salary accordingly. But those are manageable.
More broadly, operating across geographies forces you to have a coherent pay strategy. You can't just make up numbers on the fly when everything is visible. You need a structure, a methodology, a rationale. That's actually one of the hidden benefits of pay transparency for global companies: it creates internal discipline.
With the EU Pay Transparency Directive coming into force, do you have plans for Europe?
It's not something we've had to actively prepare for, because we're already doing what the directive asks and even more. We're transparent by default. Where I think the legislation will hit harder is in sectors like manufacturing, logistics, or large service businesses operating across multiple countries with complex workforce structures. For a company like ours, where transparency is baked into the culture, the directive essentially validates what we already do.
In the highly competitive AI talent market, is pay transparency a competitive advantage or a risk?
Definitely a competitive advantage. In the AI space, most top-tier companies already pay well, candidates generally know they're going to get an above-market salary somewhere. So the question stops being "who pays most?" and becomes "where do I want to work and why?" Transparency shifts the conversation to the right things: the mission, the culture, the impact, the growth trajectory.
On the recruitment process side of things, having salary ranges upfront dramatically reduces friction at the offer stage. There's far less back-and-forth. We can say: here is the offer, it falls within the band we communicated from the start. That creates a cleaner, more respectful process for everyone.
What are the main challenges?
The biggest ongoing challenge is geography. A New York salary and a London salary are structured very differently with base pay, tax, benefits, cost of living, all vary significantly. When those differences are visible, people ask questions. "Why is someone in New York earning more than me in London?" That requires consistent education. We revisit it every salary review cycle, making sure managers understand the methodology deeply enough to explain it clearly and handle pushback confidently. Training managers is not a one-time, it's a continuous process.
What one piece of advice would you give to a company just starting out on pay transparency?
Be clear on the why before you publish anything. It's not as simple as exporting a spreadsheet and making it public. You need to understand your own position: do you differentiate by department? By country? By level? People will ask how it applies to them specifically and when something directly impacts someone's pocket, they'll dig into every detail. You need to be ready with honest, coherent answers.
And the other thing I wish someone had told me earlier: it never stops. Salary bands need to be refreshed regularly, at least annually, and in a market like AI, sometimes twice a year. The moment your bands are public, any drift from the market is immediately visible. You can't let them go stale. Transparency is a commitment, not a one-time exercise.