More Than 40% Of Companies Say Workers Have Asked For Higher Pay To Offset Inflation. Few Have Revised Salary Budgets.
Inflation may be hitting new 40-year highs, but less than a quarter of U.S. organizations say […]
Inflation may be hitting new 40-year highs, but less than a quarter of U.S. organizations say they are revising their salary budgets due to inflation—despite many workers asking for raises or other actions to cope with higher prices, according to a new survey.
Mercer, the human resources consulting firm, surveyed more than 300 U.S. employers in March and found that 45% do not factor inflation into salary budgets. Less than 25% say they are making changes to their salary budgets because of inflation—yet 42% say workers have been asking them to take financial actions to help with rising costs.
Still, the survey found that nearly half of organizations say they will conduct additional salary reviews for either some or all of their employees as a response, a sign some may be growing concerned about losing workers if they don’t take action. A full 77% said dissatisfaction with pay or an offer of higher wages at another firm were the top reason they were seeing turnover among their ranks.
“Organizations are being cautious about setting a practice of paying primarily based on cost of living, as opposed to cost of labor,” Tauseef Rahman, a partner at Mercer, said in an email about the new survey data. He was referring to the way many employers make decisions about compensation, determining what people with certain job titles in specific regions are typically paid.
He’s not surprised by the disconnect between what employees are requesting and what employers have done so far in response. As Rahman says, “the concern is that organizations can create the expectation that pay is entirely based on cost of living, and not based on the cost of labor which has more to do with availability and demand of talent.” One challenge, he says, is that employers “might not have been clear with candidates and employees as to … [how] pay was being set.”
At the same time, Mercer’s survey also finds that 50% of organizations say they’re paying more than market rate due to the challenges they face finding and keeping employees, and 41% say they are implementing some kind of retention bonus.
Meanwhile, 60% of respondents reported seeing an increase in the number of counter-offers candidates are receiving, and about 30% say they are beating or matching counter-offers.
