As pay becomes visible — by law in a growing number of states and by expectation everywhere else — the hardest questions land on your front-line managers. Compensation expert Michael Maciekowich explains how to get them ready.
Pay transparency is no longer a question of if it reaches your organization — it’s a question of whether your managers are ready when it does. More than two dozen states now have some form of pay transparency requirement, and even where there’s no law, younger candidates increasingly expect it and employees freely compare notes online. The pressure of that shift doesn’t land on HR. It lands on the front-line supervisor — the person an employee turns to first to ask, “Why am I paid what I’m paid?”
To unpack what that means for the people who actually field those questions, Phil Brandt sat down with Michael Maciekowich, National Director at Astron Solutions and AAIM’s longtime compensation partner, for a practical look at how to prepare your supervisors before pay becomes visible. If your managers can’t answer that question with confidence, transparency won’t just expose pay data — it will expose how well, or how poorly, your compensation program was built and explained in the first place. The good news: that’s preparable, and preparing for it is one of the most effective trust-building moves an employer can make right now.
What’s Inside
1. Why pay transparency lands on your managers
2. The 3 questions every supervisor should be able to answer
Transparency changes who has to explain compensation, and the answer is your supervisors. Once ranges are posted and employees are comparing figures, the conversation moves out of the annual review and into everyday one-on-ones. Employees don’t email HR first — they ask the manager standing in front of them.
That’s where many programs quietly break. As Maciekowich frames it, the moment a manager deflects is the moment trust starts to go.
“They’re going to look at their boss and say, ‘Why am I paid what I’m paid? Do you understand this program?’ And if they sit there and go, ‘We’ll go talk to HR’ — we’ve lost them.”
— Michael Maciekowich, National Director, Astron Solutions
The point isn’t that managers need to become compensation experts. It’s that they need to be equipped — because an employee who hears “go ask HR” reads it as “no one here can explain why I’m valued the way I am.”
There’s a simple readiness test for whether your managers are prepared for pay transparency: can each of them answer the three questions an employee is most likely to ask?
Read those again from the employer’s side. They aren’t a script for employees chasing raises — they’re a diagnostic for you. If a supervisor can’t answer them, the problem usually isn’t the supervisor. It’s a signal that something upstream in the program — the philosophy, the structure, or the communication — wasn’t built to be explained.
Managers can only answer those questions if the program behind them is documented and intentional. Maciekowich calls a written compensation philosophy the “blueprint” — the statement of why you pay what you pay, how you define your market, and how you handle internal equity. Without it, there’s nothing for a manager to point to, and nothing solid for an audit to test against.
This is also why transparency tends to surface pay-equity questions so quickly. The moment ranges are visible, employees compare and ask why differences exist. Employers who’ve documented their philosophy and reviewed their structure in advance can answer those questions calmly. Employers who haven’t are answering them for the first time, in public, under pressure.
So the real preparation happens before the information is out: confirm you have a current salary structure, a documented philosophy, and a pay review you’d be comfortable standing behind if every number became visible tomorrow.
Give managers something to lean on — then make sure everyone leans on the same thing. Two moves matter most.
Build a simple FAQ. Give supervisors a cheat sheet with the basic, approved answer to the questions employees actually ask. As Maciekowich notes, supervisors “need a crutch” here — they aren’t compensation experts and shouldn’t have to be. A one-page reference they can speak from confidently is enough.
Drive consistency. Walk that FAQ through a staff meeting so every manager hears and understands the same answers, because employees will absolutely compare notes.
“They’re going to talk to each other afterwards and say, ‘Well, what did your boss say?’ They’re going to test that.”
— Michael Maciekowich, National Director, Astron Solutions
Consistency is what protects trust at scale. When two employees get two different explanations for the same policy, the policy looks arbitrary — and arbitrary is the opposite of what transparency is supposed to deliver. Done well, the reverse happens: managers gain confidence, employees hear a consistent story, and the program starts to feel deliberate rather than improvised.
Do we need to prepare for pay transparency if our state doesn’t require it?
Yes. Even without a state mandate, employees can discuss and post their pay freely, and younger candidates increasingly expect transparency — so the conversations happen whether or not the law requires disclosure.
What should a manager say when an employee asks why they’re paid what they’re paid?
The manager should be able to explain the logic — how the role was valued, how the market was considered, and where the employee falls in the range — without deflecting to HR. The specifics come from your documented compensation philosophy.
Where do we start if our managers aren’t ready?
Start with the program behind them. Confirm you have a documented philosophy and a current salary structure, then build a short FAQ and walk every supervisor through it so the answers stay consistent.
Pay transparency rewards the employers who prepared and exposes the ones who didn’t — and the difference shows up in your managers. A documented philosophy, a current structure, and supervisors who can answer three straightforward questions turn a moment of exposure into a moment of trust. That’s not a compliance scramble; it’s a chance to show employees that how you pay them was thought through.
If you’d like help getting there, AAIM can support both halves of this work. On the program side, our compensation strategies work — led by our longtime partner Michael Maciekowich and the team at Astron Solutions — can help you put a philosophy and structure on paper and audit what you already have. On the people side, AAIM’s leadership and supervisor training prepares your front-line managers to have these conversations with confidence. Members can also tap Aaime Hart on the AAIM website anytime. Not yet a member? Learn more about AAIM membership.
You can watch or listen to the full conversation between Michael Maciekowich and Phil Brandt on This Week at Work — including the parts we didn’t get into here: the labor-market reports shaping 2026 pay decisions, why Michael argues compensation should be treated like a three-year business strategy, how to measure the real ROI of your compensation spend alongside your CFO, and his rapid-fire take on the biggest mistakes employers make with pay. Watch or listen to the full episode of This Week at Work.
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