Don’t like handcuffs ? Join Netflix !

Reed Hastings is the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, which provides live streaming TV and video shows from the internet on a monthly subscription basis in the USA, Canada, UK and Ireland. A great concept and one that led to the ultimate doom of the local video/DVD rental business (think Blockbusters). In How to set…

3 factors influencing the promotion rate for your organisation

As we got into salary review time or mid-year reviews, colleagues have asked me, almost every year, the same question about the promotion rate : “What is a reasonable benchmark for the number of employees to be promoted each year ?” Now, bear with me please because my answer is one that usually is not…

Why the big pay gap between managers on the same grade?

In my career in Compensation & Benefits, I have often heard this question or a variation upon it : I see managers getting twice the pay of other managers from the same group and same job grade… Why is this, and how can you explain it ? This is a fair question on the differences…

Should you rely on free compensation data from magazines and recruitment organisations?

Recently a few recruitment organisations have issued free “salary guides” for certain countries or industries. Magazines, whether business oriented or focused to the individual consumer, also run regular reports and guides with exciting titles like “Are you paid enough ?”. There are even websites where you can get free pay information (say, regarding a position…

Of average salaries in Europe

A while ago, a Sales Director asked for “an average salary for a sales/account manager in IT company selling specialty software within Europe”. I wish it were that simple but there is no such thing as a “salary in Europe”. For the same job, each country will pay different salaries. Salaries are normally always expressed…

GCC Nationals pay: a lesson from the Y2K bug

Remember the big scare of the so-called “Y2K bug” ? Back at the end of the Nineties, the world started to realise that a lot of computer programs had been written with dates expressed “55” or “87” instead of “1955” and “1987”. As year 2000 was approaching fast and therefore dates would become “00” ie…

Merit increase or bonus, how do you reward performance ?

Welcome back to Compensation Insider ! I wish you an excellent year and hope you will be visiting my site regularly ๐Ÿ™‚ Given we are at the beginning of the year and most HR and Compensation experts are about to go through salary reviews and bonus payments, I thought it would be relevant to share…