A new survey of salary budget growth information in the U.S. indicates that business managers may be more likely to consider merit increases for their employees in the next year.
Budgets for pay raises have been particularly low in recent years: According to the WorldatWork “2013-2014 Salary Budget Survey,” the growth rate for salary increases among U.S. companies averaged as little as 2.2 percent in 2009. Recently, however, the numbers have started slowly creeping back up. In fact, the WorldatWork Survey predicts a 3.1 percent average increase in base pay in 2014. Such an occurrence would be the first salary budget increase to measure more than 3 percent since 2008, before the economic downturn.
According to Fortune, the slow growth in salary budgets across the U.S. is a direct result of a struggling economy. Many employers continue to be wary of increasing their overhead costs. However, Kerry Chou, senior compensation practice leader for WorldatWork, told Fortune managers are starting to make significant efforts to properly reward their employees for hard work.
Despite tough economic conditions, performance and compensation management remains an important strategy in keeping businesses competitive among job seekers. Houston Chronicle said competitive salaries are one of the most important ways companies can attract hard-working employees. Deciding how to appropriately reward staff is often a time-consuming and difficult task. Many managers often struggle to access and analyze the performance metrics necessary for making important merit decisions. Incentive compensation software, however, can make the process much easier. Not only can it automate the data analytics process, compensation software also allows managers to create highly customized modules for recognizing the right key performance indicators.
Employers can take advantage of recent growth in salary budgets to gain a competitive edge above other businesses in the same field.
