Employee Benefits poll: Nine out of 10 organisations are either planning to give staff a pay rise in 2022 or are considering the option.
According to Employee Benefits’ latest research, 43% of employers confirmed they will boost staff pay next year, while another 47% said the strategy was under consideration.
Just 7% of respondents admitted they had no plans to introduce a wage increase for their employees in 2022, with 3% indicating that they had not yet decided whether to look at the option of raising staff pay.
The poll comes as a welter of UK businesses offer above inflation pay rises to tackle staff shortages, particularly in the logistics and hospitality sectors, which have been hit by the departure of European workers post-Brexit and the impact of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
According to the Office for National Statistics’ latest figures, annual growth in average regular pay, excluding bonuses, was 7.4% in the three months to June, or 5.2% after adjusting for inflation.
However it estimated underlying growth in nominal pay, after accounting for pandemic-induced distortions, at between 3.5% and 4.9%.
This chimes with Bank of England’s recent findings, which revealed that underlying annual pay growth has averaged around 2.75% during the pandemic, and was above 3% in the three months to May.