Competing for talent: CMA guidance for HR teams on compliance with competition law

On 9 September 2025, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published new guidance, "Competing for Talent", which is targeted at HR professionals and sets out what businesses should do to comply with competition law when recruiting and retaining employees (the Guidance). 

What you need to know

• Competition law applies to the recruitment and retention of staff. Agreements between businesses to fix wages, restrict hiring practices or exchange competitively sensitive information may constitute a breach of UK competition law.
• The concept of "competitor" is broader in the context of labour markets: the key question is whether the businesses concerned may be competing to hire the same talent, regardless of whether they compete on the products / services offered.
• The Guidance includes new guidelines on collective bargaining negotiations between employers and workers and how to ensure that these negotiations do not infringe competition law.

• no poach agreements;
• wage fixing;
• the exchange of competitively sensitive information; and
• collective bargaining negotiations.

No poach agreements

No poach agreements are agreements where two or more businesses agree not to approach or hire the employees of another (or not to do so without the current employer's consent). These arrangements may infringe competition law even if they are not reciprocal in nature.

The CMA's guidance describes no poach agreements as distinct from non-solicitation provisions, which are commonly found in commercial contracts (such as secondment, consultancy, or service agreements), where a client undertakes not to recruit the service provider’s personnel during or shortly after the contractual term. However, to comply with competition law, businesses must ensure that such clauses are objectively necessary, proportionate to the legitimate aims of the agreement, and limited in duration, scope, and geography.

Competition regulators across the globe have shown an increasing interest in no poach agreements in recent years (see our March 2024 update). For example, the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission issued guidance in October 2016 and announced the first criminal charges for a no poach agreement in 2021. More recently, the European Commission  published a policy brief indicating that no poach agreements are a form of buyer cartel (see our May 2024 update) and in June 2025 the European Commission imposed fines of EUR 329 million in relation to no poach agreements in the online food delivery sector (see our June 2025 update). In the UK, the CMA is currently investigating reciprocal arrangements relating to the hiring or recruitment of staff as part its continuing investigation into anti-competitive conduct in the supply of fragrances and fragrance ingredients.  

Wage fixing

Wage fixing agreements are agreements between two or more businesses relating to salaries or other employment benefits. They include agreements to align wage increases or to set salary caps.  

The Guidance provides two examples of wage fixing that are likely to infringe competition law:

• Wage fixing through an industry forum. These fora should not be used to facilitate agreements by competing firms to cap wage increases for specific roles and/or for a specific duration.
• Recommendations at trade association meetings. The circulation of standardised pay rates for various roles within a sector by a trade association, where members adopt or rely on those rates, may amount to a wage-fixing arrangement between the association and its members.

Information exchange 

It is well-established under UK competition law that the exchange of competitively sensitive information between competitors is typically classified as a "by object" infringement, which means that such conduct is presumed to be harmful to competition. 

There is a legal presumption that competitively sensitive information, such as future pricing intentions, production volumes or business strategies, is taken into account when received by competitors. This presumption applies even when the recipient of the information does not reciprocate or act upon the information. Competition regulators have imposed significant fines where competitively sensitive information was disclosed on a unilateral basis, during one-off meetings, or via unsolicited emails and informal text messages.

The CMA's Guidance confirms that, in the context of labour markets, the following categories of information are more likely to raise concerns from a competition law perspective:

• Current pay information: confidential information relating to current salaries or contractor rates provides competitors with insight on competitive recruitment practices, especially when the information is current and attributable to a particular business.
• Future pay rates and intentions: confidential information relating to future wages and contractor rates and intentions, including actual wages or rates, increases to wage or rate amounts and the timing of such increases, is likely to constitute competitively sensitive information. The Guidance also makes clear that the unilateral and unsolicited disclosure of future salary or pay rates in informal, social settings is likely to raise competition issues.
• Other terms and conditions of employment: information on other terms and conditions of employment (such as bonuses, benefits and other terms and conditions of employment) may also constitute competitively sensitive information. The Guidance does not specify which "benefits" or conditions are likely to raise competition concerns: in practice, this would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. 

When assessing whether information is competitively sensitive, the key question is whether the information reduces uncertainty as to the operation of the market and/or could influence the competitive strategy of other businesses.

The Guidance sets out the following scenarios where information exchange between competitors in the procurement of labour is more likely to raise competition law issues:

• Legitimate meetings that stray into sensitive topics. Informal discussions relating to pay and recruitment should be avoided: the disclosure of competitively sensitive information in this situation may infringe competition law even if the purpose of the meeting is legitimate.
• Discussions between businesses that compete in the procurement of labour. Businesses may compete to hire and retain staff, even if they are not competing for the same customers or work on downstream markets. For example, a supermarket retailer and a hotel business are unlikely to compete for the same customers, but they may compete for the recruitment of IT personnel that specialise in online e-commerce.
• Benchmarking via third-party consultancies. If competitively sensitive information, such as salary data, is shared with a third party consultancy which does not aggregate that information (or otherwise discloses the information in a manner that can be reverse engineered and attributed to an individual participant), the disclosure of that information to competitors is likely to raise competition issues.
• Format of exchanges. Unilateral, bilateral and multilateral disclosures of competitively sensitive information between competitors can be caught in both formal and informal contexts. This includes exchanges in informal settings, such as social, client, industry events, or telephone or in-person conversations. 

The Guidance acknowledges that information exchange between businesses can be beneficial to competition. For example, the properly conducted benchmarking of best practices where information is aggregated and anonymised can lead to efficient outcomes by enabling HR teams to make informed decisions about topics such as pay, benefits and recruitments strategies. However, it is important to ensure that HR professionals do not share competitively sensitive information, which can restrict competition and infringe competition law.

The CMA's Guidance confirms that the following types of information are unlikely to be considered competitively sensitive information:

• Public information. Information that is genuinely public and readily accessible to the public is generally not considered to be competitively sensitive. This can include publicly available salary information published by the ONS and information set out in public job advertisement forums.
• Aggregated and anonymised information. Information that is sufficiently anonymised and aggregated (such that individual inputs cannot be reverse engineered) and that does not reveal strategic insights or intentions is less likely to be considered to be competitively sensitive. 
• Historical information. Older information is less likely to be competitively sensitive than current or forward-looking information. 

The CMA recently concluded its first infringement decision relating to the exchange of information in labour markets. In March 2025, the CMA imposed fines exceeding £4.2 million on five broadcasting and production companies for sharing / disclosing information relating to freelance labour rates in relation to sports content. The CMA found that each instance of information exchange had the object of restricting competition, irrespective of actual market effects (see our June 2025 update).

Collective negotiations between workers and employees

Collective bargaining is a structured negotiation process between employers and/or employers' organisations (such as trade associations or industry bodies) and workers and/or employees' representative organisations (such as trade unions), aimed at determining minimum employment terms or regulating employer-worker relations to promote fairer and better working relationships. This may include collective negotiations between employees, self-employed individuals and employee's representatives, such as trade unions, in relation to salaries, pay rates or other working conditions (e.g. rest breaks, safety standards, basic benefits).

The Guidance confirms that the CMA will not enforce competition law in respect of workers and companies procuring their labour that are engaged in genuine collective bargaining, irrespective of whether workers are employed or self-employed. This position is consistent with a January 2024 speech by the CMA's Chief Executive, Sarah Cardell, in which she indicated that the CMA will adopt a similar approach to collective bargaining in line other international competition authorities (see our March 2024 update). 

However, the CMA's Guidance specifically states that, when preparing for collective bargaining, employers must not exchange competitively sensitive information unless strictly necessary and then only where the objective cannot be achieved through alternative means, such as anonymised aggregation of data by an independent third party. The same principle applies to coordination among self-employed workers and their representative bodies. 

If the scope of information sharing goes beyond what is strictly necessary for the purposes of collective bargaining (such as employers sharing recommendations as to the their proposed rates of pay), there is a risk that employers may be found to have engaged in unlawful wage fixing or collusion. 

Competition authorities around the world continue to demonstrate an increased interest in potential infringements of competition law in labour markets. Enforcement action is expected to continue to increase. 

Failure to comply with competition law may result in serious consequences for companies and/or individuals, including fines of up to 10% of global turnover, director disqualification, exclusion from public tenders, exposure to private damages actions, individual criminal prosecution and/or imprisonment for engagement in cartel activity.

In light of its Guidance, the CMA will expect businesses to understand how competition law applies to their hiring and retention practices, including by ensuring that HR professionals do not engage in wage fixing, no poach agreements or the exchange of competitively sensitive information with other employers, including via third parties. The Guidance confirms that in-house recruitment teams should receive targeted training on competition law risks. Businesses also need to ensure that there are robust internal reporting mechanisms in place to support compliance and enable staff to raise concerns effectively.

Want to know more? 

• First EU and UK fines for labour markets antitrust infringements, 11 June 2025 - an overview of the first decisions relating to labour markets by the European Commission and the CMA. 
• CMA's growing interest in labour markets, 12 March 2024 - an overview of the areas of risk identified by the CMA in relation to labour markets based on recent speeches and publications.
• Wage fixing and no-poach agreements: restrictions by object?, 23 May 2024 - an overview of the European Commission's May 2024 policy brief setting out how it is likely to view wage fixing and no-poach agreements.