MISCO, Malta’s leading HR and marketing research advisory firm, has just released the publication of its 30th edition of its annual salary survey, The Salaries & Benefits Report 2015/16.
Amongst many important new findings, this year’s Edition shows that employee benefits are more commonly featuring in remuneration packages across the board and across all sectors and that these include health insurance, life insurance and personal accident which are common to all sectors, although their extent varies according to the employees’ level.
Conducted in-house over a nine-month period, MISCO’s report is based on response received from organisations across the private and public sector and a sample size of over 7,000 different remuneration packages.
One of the most important outcomes from this report shows how tighter labour market conditions are expected to put upward pressures on salaries to a predicted increase in compensation, per employee of about 2%, a prediction that is also in line with projections by the Central Bank of Malta.
“Over the years the market place has changed, reflecting the transformation of both the economy and society. The research on compensation packages in the eighties was mostly in manufacturing organisations and the situation is very different today with services, particularly financial, information systems, health and distribution and logistics taking the lead. Work is continuously changing with the impact of globalisation, migration, technology and trends in society, and these are today reflected in the compensation packages that are being offered,” says Joseph FX Zahra, Managing Director of MISCO.
“It is a highly dynamic market, and MISCO has moved with the times, in most occasions predicting the changes, advising on opportunities and raising alarms on possible risks. MISCO additionally provides compensation benchmarking reports to individual organisations facing challenges in keeping their best talent and concerned with matching their packages to those offered in the market,” added Mr Zahra.
The report shows salary ranges for 79 different positions and features five new job roles and their respective remuneration. These include Legal Managers/Senior Lawyers, Administration/Office Executives, Digital Marketing Executives/Officers, Production Supervisors and Engineering Managers. The report also highlights the fact that finance, marketing and technical roles are becoming the most difficult to fill due to lack of available skills and experience required to carry out these roles.
The main aim of MISCO’s Salaries & Benefits Report is to provide companies’ management with a benchmark and information resource in respect to the remuneration packages being offered to a wide-range of employees working in various fields across the local market. It also includes a summary of findings shaping the main developments on the salary dynamics observed over time in the local labour market. The net result is that positions such as Accountants, Accounts Executives, Finance Managers, Marketing Executives and Production Managers have been highly in demand by employers, pushing the median and mean total remuneration packages of such positions to increase since 2011/12.
Annualized salary growth rate for these positions was also high when analysing the median and mean basic remuneration packages. Positions, namely Project Managers, Purchasing Managers, Financial Controllers and Human Resources Managers, also reported a high annualised salary growth rate in their median and mean basic remuneration packages.
“This year’s report shows that little innovation is visible in the way employees are being remunerated. In fact, minimal increases were noted in the minimum and upper quartile ranges which could have been prompted by the growth in use of performance bonuses,” explains Maria Zahra from MISCO.
“For the third year, MISCO also conducted the Annual Survey on HR Developments. Over the past twelve months, we have noticed how performance management, as an HR focus within the organisation, has been given greater importance and is increasingly being used for evaluating training needs of employees. This is due to the fact that companies are recognising that investing and training its people is an important way to attract and retain the best talent,” added Maria Zahra.
The Report also shows how organisations are increasingly using social media to recruit new employees. In fact, we reported an increase of 20% of participating organisations, when compared to last year, who are using this tool to attract new talent.
“Recruitment agencies, however, remain the most effective methods for attracting employees,” concluded Maria Zahra.
As in previous reports, the information in this latest Salaries & Benefits Report is intended to be a tool for senior management who are seeking to compete effectively in the marketplace for talent. This report also provides information related to employee benefits being included in employees’ total remuneration packages.