Next year most companies instead of raising salaries significantly plan to concentrate on comprehensive further training. This is a finding of a current study prepared by Mercer Human Resource Consulting which questioned 430 mainly multinational European companies on their salary strategy for 2007.
The study reveals a new trend, i.e. the non-monetary component of salaries is becoming more important as compared to the monetary one. Whereas 16 percent of companies surveyed by Mercer said to invest more in raising basic salaries next year, 58 percent plan to put the emphasis on further training of their employees.
The major challenge for 83 percent of employers asked during the study consists in finding a general remuneration policy which fosters both the recruitment of new highly qualified staff as well as the commitment of those already working in the company. The second biggest challenge according to 65 percent of people questioned is an adequate and differentiated remuneration policy for highly qualified staff. Furthermore, remuneration policies should contribute to achieving financial business objectives (according to 64 percent) and should be such as to correspond to the quality of the performance to which they relate (63 percecent said so).
However, only 11 percent think that it is important to adapt remuneration models to the needs of senescent staff. Says Mercer consultant Bernd Thomaszik: “Given the demographic developments currently taking place in Europe it is surprising that only few companies are concerned with specific remuneration models suiting the needs of ageing employees. 