Despite all the layoff talk, companies are still hiring. And within industries that can’t snap up talent fast enough, like travel and leisure, employers are handing out competitive offers to people with in-demand skills. For those who still have their foot on the hiring pedal, a new report from compensation benchmarking firm OpenComp offers a peek at some of the top hiring and compensation trends. Here are three that HR leaders should pay attention to, according to the firm’s latest findings.
Transparency remains paramount
There’s been a major shift toward pay transparency in the past year due to new laws going into effect in places like New York and California. But findings show that even companies outside jurisdictions where pay transparency is required are warming up to creating and publishing formal pay ranges for open roles.
Seventy percent of organizations now have formal salary bands in place, according to OpenComp. And the efforts to make salary details public are paying off for employers who choose to partake: offer acceptance increased by at least 5%.
Employees want a pay bump
Despite the shaky job market, workers still expect a significant pay bump when they switch roles. The bottom line is that job candidates—even internally—still have choices. The average base salary increase between job levels is 15%, according to OpenComp. And as companies post-layoffs ask employees to do more with less, they’ll be expected to compensate workers well for it, says OpenComp’s founder and CEO Thanh Nguyen.
“You see these Fortune 100 companies laying off people, but they’re going to ask their internal staff to cross-pollinate and do more,” he tells CHRO Daily. Their employees’ skills are still very much in demand, and companies will pay for them in the long run.
Certain roles lead the pack on competitive pay, with engineers taking up the largest piece of the payroll pie. Across industries, engineering roles account for the largest percentage of a company’s total payroll. Engineers account for about 25% to 30% of an organization’s payroll at most companies.
Geography matters less
Despite several high-profile companies calling employees back to the office, flexible and dispersed work is here to stay. That’s why 50% of organizations currently have a geographic pay strategy. In the past, many employers had different pay scales for each state or region employees resided. Now, more companies are moving toward simplified geographic pay strategies.
Most companies have downsized from about five geographically prescribed pay tiers to an average of two, slowly closing the geographic pay gap, according to OpenComp’s data. The more streamlined geographic pay tiers benefit both employees and HR. Workers feel they can freely move without a significant pay cut, while people teams deal with less of the administrative headache that comes with managing pay across regions.
Most organizations surveyed by OpenComp report that they do not adjust pay for employees who move, and over 47% of employers report that they keep paying the same despite location.
Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton
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A round-up of the most important HR headlines, studies, podcasts, and long-reads.
– JPMorgan plans to hire 500 employees in its small business banking division. Reuters
– Apple hired former Medtronic executive Carol Surface as its first chief people officer. Bloomberg
– With no legal protections in place, employees can still be laid off even though they’re on parental leave. New York Times
– What happens when a couple is in the U.S. on H1B work visas, but only one gets laid off? Wall Street Journal
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Layoff regrets. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon shares that his only regret in laying off 3,200 employees last month is that he didn’t do it sooner. —Steve Mollman
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