I am regularly asked by potential clients for support in gathering salary data and market benchmarking. Small and mid-size companies often don’t have internal resources to handle what, for them, tends to be an infrequent exercise, so they look for outside help when it comes to make sure that their pay levels are aligned to market. Obviously,…
What does “utilities at cost” reimbursement cover ?
February 19, 2014 by 4 Comments
Nadim, one of my readers asks : “In our company for certain senior grades we do pay Utilities at actual cost which is the DEWA bill (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority). In my opinion utilities should cover the water and electricity, however I got employees who are claiming also for the household gas, or even…
Do you have questions about the Cost of Living reports ?
January 28, 2014 by 1 Comment
A few weeks ago I introduced the Cost of Living Reports for the UAE, Qatar, KSA and an overall GCC report. The reports are very comprehensive and include sections on: accommodation costs (very detailed by accommodation type and area in the Dubai and Abu Dhabi) education health transport and travel costs household goods and utility…
Frustrated : a story of customer service and data format
January 22, 2013 by 4 Comments
You know something that really annoys me ? It’s the way that the large survey providers tend to treat their customers in the GCC. Let me share an example. I have more, from other providers – maybe I’ll write them up too in the future. The customer by the way, yes, that’s me. And you.…
Time saver tip – Custom Views in Excel
January 20, 2013 by 1 Comment
There is a nagging challenge that my team and I have encountered for a long time, and I’m sure all HR and Compensation pros have faced the same. You see, we build files with confidential information about all our employees, such as their package, performance ratings, promotion potential etc. We then share partial views of…
Use the Left or Right function in Excel to extract text from a cell
November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Left and Right functions are very useful for managing text in Excel files. Let’s imagine you have text in a field and you want to retrieve from it only the characters on the left. To give you an idea, the field has grades which are composed of 2 digits indicating the level of the…
All you need to know : from compensation surveys to salary ranges and salary review
November 20, 2012 by 2 Comments
Frances, one of my readers, recently commented to me as follows : I have to create salary ranges and compare the current salary to market data. This will allow me to make the determination if the person’s pay is within the acceptable range. Year-end is approaching and I am starting to get more questions around…
