Current Reward market trends & future predictions

Reflection on 2016/17

Ironically, Brexit aside, the reward team at Oakleaf Partnership had our best year to date in 2016/17 which for us, runs April to March. Our team is now 6 strong covering compensation, benefits, pensions, HRIS & HR MI, and have recently made the decision to merge our specialist teams to create a specialist market function including Payroll, Global Mobility, Immigration and Expatriate Tax. This now makes us the largest specialist team in the HR recruitment market with 12 consultants.

This merge is a reflection of the market, as there are increasingly more positions that are combining Reward with mobility and Payroll in order to create more well-rounded employees. We are still seeing growth in the UK reward market, with a number of placements last year coming from niche firms looking to make their first UK Reward or specialist HR hire. In addition to this, we saw an increase in niche Financial Services and Commerce & Industry hiring.

Current trends

Since January 2017, the market seems to have picked up with more traditional reward hiring. We saw the cyclical increase in comp positions post year end at both Analyst and Manager level, even across the Banking sector, which was incredibly quiet with permanent Reward hiring last year, suggesting that confidence is up again in the market.

Organisations are continuing to invest in their HR systems and analytics offering, with technology and data accuracy being challenged through Gender Pay Gap reporting, and the Big 4 pushing the idea of the “HR Robot” to the majority of the large corporates. The HR robot seems to be popping up in multiple conversations and the concept of an automated HR team suddenly doesn’t sound so bizarre. This certainly puts pressure on teams to perform and to prove to the business that the personable approach to HR is what customers & stakeholders value the most.

Moving into the summer months, there has been a slight shift and benefits, pensions, sales comp/incentive plans appear to be the big buzzwords. This would lead to us thinking that organisations are starting to look at Reward as a whole and how they can attract and retain talent outside of pure compensation. Firms are having to look at their total reward offering and how they can be more creative around pay packages to encourage talented professionals to join and remain engaged.

Reward is still a highly sought-after skill set and although we have seen no notable rises in salary over the last year, Reward professionals are still above their HR generalist peers when it comes to comp. Interestingly, the C&I market (bar some sectors) appears to be closing the pay gap and we are continuing to notice the move of FS reward professionals into more creative sectors. With some C&I markets, especially retail, continuing to sky rocket and an even split of C&I and FS/PS positions available at all levels, more corporate firms are going to have to take notice of their total reward offerings and the flexibility that they offer in comparison to other industries, in order to retain excellent talent.

Future predictions

What do we anticipate for 2017/18? Hopefully it will bring less political surprises although that isn’t currently looking like the case!

Aside from this, the Reward market will continue to grow as the subjects of exec & gender pay become increasingly more topical amongst journalists and politicians. This will only heighten as organisations start releasing their Gender Pay Gap results (everyone watch out for August bank holiday weekend) and the media hones in on the figures.

This increase in press should result in better opportunities for Reward talent with both the analytical capability and the softer, business facing skills. With the shortage of strong Reward talent, the opportunity for progression is significant, and those that do take advantage of the market, can quickly progress into senior (and well paid) reward positions.

The one area that we need to look at now is how to entice individuals into the Reward space, as it is still a missed opportunity for Finance, Maths and HR graduates.

To view our latest Reward & Analytics opportunities, click here.

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