Read my top 5 tips on how to ensure your salary and benefits packages can remain competitive during the looming recession.
Take a holistic approach.
Build up a competitive offering that goes beyond salary and encompasses mental health well-being and learning and development budgets. For early, seed-stage companies, equity-based compensation is another way to ensure long-term financial security for your people.
Performance-based or cost-of-living in-kind bonuses.
These are more flexible ways of staying competitive in the current climate which can provide immediate assistance in a challenging economic time.
Review your benefits offering.
It’s also worth reviewing your overall benefits; they’re an expensive asset and many go unused. After all, a diverse workforce values a diverse set of benefits. How can you structure your benefits so that employees can choose what is valuable for them and consider them as the valuable asset they are? Platforms such as Perkbox and Thanks Ben are great for this and can include payments in kind that can reduce the cost of living for many. Using a platform like Thanks Ben to put £50 a month on a virtual debit card for your employees to spend on the little things they’re probably considering cutting back on, such as their daily coffee, is a great way of showing empathy with your people.
Take a localised approach.
If you have a remote workforce, the whole idea of how much to pay gets a whole lot more complicated. In this case, it’s important to find out the norm in the territories your people live in to allow for local nuances. Boundless, for example, has put together a great infographic setting out the norms in relevant countries.
Communicate.
Implementing transparent salaries is also another way of ensuring open lines of communication and clear expectations with your people when it comes to remuneration. Glassdoor or Figures is a good starting point but you can go further by reaching out to your network and other founders who have built similar teams in similar industries to check what they’re paying. Communicating your method and approach to salary bands to your employees brings wider transparency and appreciation for the process. It will also keep your gender equality pay gap in check, as women are 80% more likely to not negotiate pay when applying for jobs.
Ultimately, the cost of hiring and backfilling roles has just got a lot more expensive with candidates expecting increasingly higher offers, so there has never been a more appropriate time to review your remuneration strategy and how you communicate it with your employees.
Acknowledging the economic challenges we’re facing and being transparent about your thinking and strategies for remuneration will signal to your employees that you recognise we’re all feeling the pinch and doing your best within the means you have. Refusing to discuss it or acknowledge inflation is at an all-time high will only make your employees feel you’re not in touch with their daily challenges.
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