Salary Increases, a Priority in 2011
Candidates for technician and expert positions are the least satisfied with companies' salary offers.
More than 40% of them express a wish to see their remuneration increase, sometimes up to 50%
Managers, however, view the offers made to them more positively
In October 2010, the Diorh firm published the eleventh edition of its study, a reference in Morocco for analyzing salary trends. The general conclusion was that there would not be a significant drop in salaries for 2011, but rather slight increases, 5% on average. This new year also begins with an examination of how companies designed their remuneration policies during 2009-2010. This is the focus of a study that the French firm Elecio is presenting today in Casablanca. The elements of this analysis, the scoop of which was granted to Les Échos quotidien, mainly help to understand the gaps between the remuneration policies that companies are about to implement during these annual evaluations and the expectations of employees and candidates regarding the positions offered by these companies.
Salaries as seen by employees
One of the key findings of the Elecio firm concerns the gaps between current salaries and those desired by employees and candidates for positions in Moroccan companies. In this regard, if companies, as the Diorh survey shows, only wish to grant an average increase of 5% this year, the Elecio study concludes that the expectations of current and potential employees are higher and vary according to the types of profiles. In general, it is technicians and experts (i.e., employees who are individual contributors and who do not have managerial responsibilities) who express the highest levels of expectation in terms of salary increases. These profiles generally have a Bac+2 or Bac+4 level and a few years of experience. Their current average salary is 11,000 DH and the median is 9,000 DH. But according to Elecio, during their annual evaluation, a significant portion of them will express the wish to see their salary increase by 16% or even 50%. Managers and team leaders, on the other hand, will be relatively less demanding. In the Moroccan context, these generally have a Bac+5 with ten years of experience, and their average salary is 44,700 DH with a median of 44,600 DH. Thus, they will expect a salary increase of between 16 and 30%. Elecio's conclusion regarding these gaps is that, in general, individual contributors (technicians and experts) consider their current salary to be unattractive, while managers consider their situation quite comfortable.
Readjustment
If there is a "surge" in turnover this year, it would undoubtedly be much more among individual contributors than among managers, we learn from the Elecio study. This is all the more so because, even if management style and internal atmosphere are non-negligible factors in attracting and retaining talent, remuneration still retains a certain primacy, points out the French firm. Nevertheless, the study also notes that the remuneration policies adopted by Moroccan companies are becoming increasingly better developed. They tend to compensate for the brake on annual increases by variable remuneration structures, highlighting non-monetary elements (social benefits, retirement, bonuses, etc.), and using salary "grids" (internal or external) for different job levels. The implementation of these policies also tends to become more individualized and to take into account the specificities of candidates (notably their location and family situation...). However, despite the likely end of the crisis, 2011, like 2010, is a year of searching for a generally acceptable balance between "remuneration and employee expectations".
Posted on February 9, 2011
