Tough Employment Market: Should We Pay More? 

We have recently had an increase in the number of clients asking about remuneration and benefits.  Specifically, about ways to pay more because in the current climate many organisations are concerned with how to retain and attract talent.  They think that paying more might address that concern.

Organisations report that their staff are talking about the impact of inflation and high house prices; yet for many workplaces, wages or salaries might not have moved a lot or at all in the last couple of years. Employers have instead needed to cautiously navigate their organisation through the previously unknown challenges of a worldwide pandemic.

Other than salary or wages, one option worth considering is offering some form of incentive or bonus scheme linked to specific results or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  We can assist to develop and implement a bonus scheme with the necessary policy that would contain the details and procedure.

However, before deciding to increase wages or to offer a bonus or incentive scheme, we highly recommend considering the following:

1. Do you have a solid foundation of up-to-date HR policies, trained people-managers, and good people-management practices happening? Do you have clarity of roles, culture, behavioural requirements and business goals? Are you seeing good or great performance from your team?

2. Do you know where your remuneration sits within the market you want to be paying in i.e. have you decided which market you want to be in e.g. National, Industry, South Island? Do you know what your position in that market is e.g. median, upper quartile? Do you get reputable market remuneration data to check where you’re paying at present or do you just ask around, which may not be reliable? Another consideration is whether the data suggests any segmentation could be appropriate for specific roles i.e. to have a different strategy for some roles.

3. Have you taken into account the cost of administering an incentive scheme and the subsequent increased cost for leave payments, since leave rates would be impacted by the inclusion of incentive payments?

4. Have you considered whether monetary reward is actually what motivates your team members – both your stars and those you want to attract to vacancies, in comparison to other types of benefits/non-monetary rewards? Often, by the time an employee starts complaining about their pay, they are already disengaged due to other factors.  Have you assessed the climate in your workforce recently?

We work with businesses on all aspects of HR strategy and can assist with all of these areas, so that your plan for attracting and retaining the talent you need is effective and sustainable.

Please contact us if you would like further advice in this area.